Rex Stout: Black Orchids

“Find out. Tell her the appointment at the D.A.’s office is off. I want to see her as soon as I finish with you.”

I plugged in the plant room extension and gave it a buzz. In a minute Wolfe’s voice was in my ear:

“Archie? It’s about time. Get Mr. Hewitt—”

“Hold it,” I put in. “Reporting bad luck. Inspector Cramer is sitting here glaring at me. Johnny was spotted last night, and Miss Tracy is not to go to the D.A.’s office because Cramer wants to see her as soon as he gets through with me. He seems to be disgruntled about something.”

“Does he know who slept in the south room?”

“I think not. I’m sure not.”

“Very well. I’ll attend to that. Miss Tracy is here with me. She can go down whenever. Mr. Cramer is ready for her. Get Mr. Hewitt on the phone.”

“Right out loud?”

“Certainly.”

I disconnected and told Cramer, “Miss Tracy is up helping with the orchids and will be available when wanted. Excuse me.” I found Hewitt’s Long Island number and requested it, and finally got him via two butlers and a secretary, and put him through to Wolfe. Then I swiveled around and crossed my legs and clasped my hands back of my head.

“Okay, Inspector. I’m disengaged for the moment. What shall we talk about?”

“Murder.”

“Fine. Any particular murder?”

Cramer took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth and took it out again. He was controlling himself. “I hand it to you,” he said. “For barefaced lying I’d play you on the nose. Up there yesterday. You didn’t know anyone or anything. But—” He put the cigar back in his mouth. “But you’ve been hanging around there all week. Every day. And then a man gets murdered and there you are. You and Nero Wolfe.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I admit it looks sinister. But as I told you yesterday, Wolfe sent me there to look at orchids.”

“There were no orchids in the Rucker and Dill exhibit.”

“No, but there was — you know what there was. You’ve seen her. And I’m only a man after all—”

“All right, clown it. Yesterday afternoon about twenty minutes past four you were seen by young Updegraff, with Wolfe and Lewis Hewitt, in the corridor back of the Rucker and Dill exhibit. What were you doing there?”

“Well.” I hesitated. “If I told you I was pulling the string that fired the shot that killed Harry Gould, would you believe me?”

“No.”

“Then I won’t. We were walking from one place to another place.”

“You didn’t mention yesterday that you were in that corridor at that time.”

“Excuse it. Oversight.”

“Maybe. What were you saying to Ruby Lawson yesterday?”

“Ruby—?” I frowned. “Oh. Her. You mean after I told Purley she was a Chinese spy. I was trying to date her up. You see, looking at Miss Tracy so much had aroused—”

“I’ll bet it had. Did you date her?”

“Yes.”

“When is it?”

“Not is it, was it. She didn’t keep it.”

“That’s too bad. What was in the note Miss Tracy’s father gave you to take to her?”

“Now, Inspector,” I said reprovingly. “I didn’t write the note and it wasn’t addressed to me.”

“Had you met her father before?”

“Never. Didn’t know him from Adam.”

“Wasn’t it peculiar that he entrusted a perfect stranger with an important message to his daughter at a time like that?”

“Not very. He saw me entering the office. People trust me on sight. It’s my face, especially my eyes.”

“I see. That talk Wolfe had to have with Lewis Hewitt. So important he had to have it then and there, murder or no murder.”

Cramer chewed his cigar.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“So important he had to have you to take notes of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d like to see the notes you took.”

I shook my head regretfully. “Sorry, confidential business. Ask Wolfe.”

“I intend to. You won’t show me the notes?”

“Certainly not.”

“Very well. Now. Last but not least. Why did Wolfe send a man out to Richdale last night to get Anne Tracy?”

“Search me. I wasn’t here when he sent him.”

“Were you here when she came?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

I grinned at him. “When I was a kid out in Ohio we had a swell comeback for that. If someone said ‘Well?’ to you, you said, ‘Enough wells will make a river.’ Wasn’t that a stunner?”

“You bet it was. Had Lewis Hewitt engaged Wolfe to arrange for payment to W. G. Dill of the amount Anne Tracy’s father had stolen, and get a release?”

I stared at him. “By golly, that’s an idea,” I said enthusiastically. “That’s pretty cute. Hewitt took her to dinner—”

The door opened and Fritz entered. I nodded at him.

“A young man,” Fritz said, being discreet.

“Who?” I asked. “Don’t mind the Inspector; he already knows everything in the world—”

Fritz didn’t get a chance to tell me, because the young man came bouncing in. It was Fred Updegraff. He stopped in the middle of the room, saw Cramer, said, “Oh,” looked at me and demanded:

“Where’s Miss Tracy?”

I surveyed him disapprovingly. “That’s no way to behave,” I told him. “Inspector Cramer is grilling me. Go to the front room and wait your turn—”

“No.” Cramer stood up. “Get Miss Tracy down here and I’ll take her to the front room. I want to see her before I have a talk with Wolfe, and then we can all go to the D.A.’s office together.”

“The hell we can,” I remarked.

“The hell we can. Send for her.”

I sent Fritz. He used the elevator, since a lady was involved. In the office you could hear it creaking and groaning up, and pretty soon it came down again and jolted to a stop. When Anne entered Fred looked at her the way a blind man looks at the sun. I hoped I wasn’t that obvious, and anyway she wasn’t very sunny. She tried to greet us with a kind of smile, but with the red-rimmed eyes and the corners of the mouth down it certainly wasn’t the face that had stolen the show from a million flowers.

Cramer took her to the front room and shut the soundproof door behind him. I went to my desk and took advantage of this first chance to open the morning mail. Fred wandered around restlessly, looking at the titles of books on the shelves, and finally sat down and lit a cigarette.

“Am I in the way?” he asked.

“Not at all,” I assured him.

“Because if I am I can wait outdoors. Only I got a little chilly. I’ve been out there since eight o’clock.”

I abandoned the mail to swivel around and stare at him in awe.

“Good God,” I said, stupefied. “You win.” I waved a hand. “You can have her.”

“Have her?” He flushed. “What are you talking about? Who do you think you are?”

“Brother,” I said, “who I am can be left to the worms that eventually eat me, but I know who I am not. I am not a guy who swims the Hellespont, nor him who — he who flees the turmoil of battle to seek you know what on the silken cushions of Cleopatra’s barge. I’m not the type—”

The phone rang and I put the receiver to my ear and heard Wolfe’s voice: “Archie, come up here.”

“Right away,” I said, and arose and asked Fred, “Which do you want, whisky or hot coffee?”

“Coffee, if it’s not—”

“Righto. Come with me.”

I turned him over to Fritz in the kitchen and mounted the three flights to the plant rooms. It was a sunny day and some of the mats were drawn, but mostly the glass was clear, especially in the first two rooms, and the glare and blaze of color was dazzling. In the long stretch where the germinating flasks were, of course the glass was painted. Theodore Horstmann was there examining the flasks. I opened the door into the potting room, and after taking one step stopped and sniffed. My nose is good and I knew that odor. One glance at Wolfe there on his special stool, which is more like a throne, showed me that he was alive, so I dived across to the wall and grabbed the valve to turn it. It was shut tight.