Rex Stout: Prisoner's Base

“I could have told you that,” Cramer grumbled. “He has been living at the Orinoco Hotel for two months.”

“It’s a pity I didn’t ask you and save twenty dollars. While waiting for the report from Caracas, I had phoned Saul Panzer. He had come and eaten breakfast with me, and I had supplied him with money from my emergency cash reserve. From here he went to a newspaper office and got pictures of the man calling himself Eric Hagh, and from there he went to Idlewild Airport. At ten o’clock he boarded a plane for South America.”

“Not for Caracas,” Purley Stebbins objected. He was still standing with his gun in hand. “Not at ten o’clock.”

“He didn’t go to Caracas. He went to Cajamarca, Peru. The document signed by Priscilla Eads Hagh was written there. At Cajamarca he found people who had known Hagh, and two who also remembered Mrs. Hagh, and he learned, one, that Hagh was a professional gambler; two, that he had not been in Cajamarca for three years; and three, that the pictures he had with him were not of Hagh. He flew to Lima, engaged the interest of the police by a method not utterly unknown in our own city, and within twelve hours had collected enough items to phone me. The items included — you tell them, Saul. Briefly.”

Saul gave his voice a little more volume than usual, because he wasn’t facing the bulk of his audience. He had his eyes straight at Eric Hagh and had no intention of shifting them.

“They had all known Eric Hagh,” he said. “Hagh had been a gambler working up and down the coast for years. As far as they knew he had been in the States only twice, once for a spell in Los Angeles and once in New Orleans, and from New Orleans he brought back a rich American bride. They all knew about the paper he had, signed by his wife, giving him half her property. Hagh had shown it around, bragging about it. He said it had been her idea to give it to him, but he was too proud a man to sponge on a woman and he was keeping it as a souvenir. They said he had meant it; he was like that. I couldn’t ask him because he was dead. He had been caught in a snow slide in the mountains three months ago, on March nineteenth. Nobody knew what had happened to the document.”

Saul cleared his throat. He’s always a little husky. “The man I had pictures of, the man I’m looking at now — his name is Siegfried Muecke. Twenty-six people in Lima recognized him from the pictures. He was first seen there about two years ago, and no one knows where he came from. He is also a professional gambler, and he went around a good deal with Hagh. He was with him in the mountains, working a tourist resort with him, when Hagh was killed by a snow slide. Nobody has seen Siegfried Muecke around Lima since Hagh’s death. Do you want more details?”

“Not at present, Saul,” Wolfe told him.

Purley Stebbins was moving. He passed in front of Helmar and between Brucker and Quest, and around me, and posted himself directly behind Siegfried Muecke, who was now fairly well seen to, with Saul at his left, Purley at his rear, and me at his right.

Wolfe was going on. “Mr. Muecke’s preparations for his coup, crossing the Andes to Caracas so as to operate from a base where he and Mr. Hagh were both unknown, can of course be traced. At Caracas he selected a lawyer, with some care probably, and decided to present his claim in a letter — not to the former Mrs. Hagh, but to the trustee of the property, Mr. Helmar. At some point he also decided that effective pursuit of the claim would require his presence in New York, and of course it would be fatal to his plans if either Miss Eads or Mrs. Fomos ever got a glimpse of him. There was only one way to solve that difficulty: they must die.”

“But not until after June thirtieth,” Bowen objected.

Wolfe nodded. “That’s a point, certainly, but it’s not inexplicable. Looking at his face, which appears rigid in paralysis, I doubt if he’ll explain for us, not now at least. I offer alternatives: some incident may have alarmed him and precipitated action, or he may not have known that if Miss Eads died before June thirtieth the Softdown stock, the bulk of her fortune, would go to others. I think the latter more likely, since he was offered, through Mr. Irby, a cash settlement of one hundred thousand dollars and wouldn’t even discuss it.

“Another point should soon be clarified, whether Mr. Muecke is persuaded to help or not. Did he arrange for the murders of Miss Eads and Mrs. Fomos, or did he commit them himself? That can of course be established by inquiry in Caracas and of airline personnel I think, you’ll find that he did them himself. You should be able to verify his first flight to New York, and surely you will have no trouble with his return to Caracas, since he must have left New York on Tuesday to be in Caracas to speak with Mr. Irby on the telephone on Wednesday. Also, he had to leave Caracas again Wednesday afternoon or evening to get back to New York Thursday, and we know he did that.”

Wolfe’s eyes fixed on Muecke, and he spoke to him for the first time. “For myself, Mr. Muecke, there is no room for doubt. You set your pattern and kept to it with pigheaded constancy. You waylaid Mrs. Jaffee, and struck and strangled her, exactly as you had done with Miss Eads, and previously with Mrs. Fomos. I said you were no bungler, but the truth is — Archie!”

I had noticed once before, when he had slammed the door in my face, that Andy Fomos could move fast when he wanted to. He was out of his chair and across the room to our little group like a flying saucer. Apparently his idea was to do something to Muecke with his bare hands, as his personal comment on what Muecke had done to Mrs. Fomos, but there was no time to analyze ideas, including my own. Now, at leisure, I can and I have, and to complete the record I report the results.

The question is, since the worst Andy Fomos could have done was to disfigure Muecke superficially, why did I want to interfere? Why didn’t I give him gangway and even block Purley? Why did I haul off and plug Andy’s iron jaw with so much behind it that he sailed through the air before he stretched out, and my wrist and knuckles were stiff for a week? The answer is, if I had touched Muecke I would have killed him, but I had to touch somebody or something, and Andy Fomos, bless his hundred and ninety pounds that made it really satisfactory, gave me the excuse.

Then Cramer was there, and Skinner, and I sidestepped to make room, and stood, licking blood from my knuckles and watching Purley get handcuffs on Siegfried Muecke.