Rex Stout - Where There's a Will

The door opened to admit the butler. He was beginning to look as if he wouldn’t mind going back to his ancestral halls for a little vacation.

“Two men to see you, sir, a Mr. Panzer and a Mr. Keems.”

Wolfe told him to show them up.

I laid my pen down and looked at Wolfe in extreme disgust.

“By Jiminy,” I said, with the whine that I knew set his teeth on edge, “you sure are grilling them. Talk about ruthless. It gives me nervous prostration just to see them suffer. And squirm under your merciless thrusts. Lovin’ babe! I don’t think I ever saw you in better form—”

“Archie! Shut up!”

“But who the hell do you think you are, the inquiring reporter?”

“I do not, and I don’t need that. I’m trying to think. I’m trying to think about these people, and in the meantime having another look at them. There’s too many of them. If one of them sneaked through those woods and borrowed the shotgun from Noel Hawthorne and blew his head off, who is going to prove it and how? — Good afternoon, Saul. Good afternoon, Johnny. Come in. Sit down. — Am I a confounded Indian, to go up there and crawl around on my hands and knees, smelling footprints? And do you suppose any of this tribe is going to tell us anything?” He snorted. “Trying to get me interested in a family row about Andy being an actor! Bah!” He shook a finger at me menacingly. “You let me alone! One more whine out of you and — how the devil can I think if there’s nothing to think about?”

I elevated my shoulders and turned my palms up. “Then we might as well go home and look at the atlas.”

“I agree with you.”

He abandoned me. “Did Orrie find you, Saul?”

“Yes, sir.” Saul always pretended he didn’t hear Wolfe and me jawing. “Miss Karn hadn’t appeared when Orrie relieved me at 9:20. At 9:25 I tested her phone and she was in her apartment.”

“You told Orrie to report here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You need sleep.”

“I’ll manage till tonight.”

“You’re free, are you, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir, I’m always free when you need me.”

His bright eager tones, like little Willie offering to clean the blackboard, always gave me a pain. Johnny Keems was the kind of guy who does exercises every morning and buys gum at every slot vendor he sees for an excuse to look in the mirror. Dozens of times I would have resigned my job if I hadn’t known his tongue was hanging out for it.

“Put this down,” said Wolfe. “Both of you. Dunwoodie, Prescott & Davis, law firm on lower Broadway. Mr. Glenn Prescott. Mr. Eugene Davis. Naomi Karn got a job there as a stenographer in 1934, and after two years became the secretary of Mr. Davis. A year or so later she left to associate herself with Mr. Noel Hawthorne in a private capacity. This is a fishing trip; I want anything you can get. Saul will direct; Johnny, you will consult with him as usual. One detail: the name of the person who did confidential stenographic work for Mr. Prescott on March 7th, 1938. If any approach is made to that person it must be with great circumspection. Johnny will of course canvass the young women with that beauty treatment outfit — what is it, Archie?”

“Nothing.” I had only made a noise. The rhinoceros had the idiotic idea that when Johnny looked at a girl and smiled she melted like ice cream in the summer sun. The fact is — oh, what’s the difference. He’ll marry a pickpocket’s daughter for her money.

They asked some questions, especially Saul, and got answers. After they had gone Wolfe went into a trance. I overlooked it and didn’t try any prodding, because it was one o’clock and I knew what he was expecting. Pretty soon it arrived. The butler himself brought one tray and a maid in uniform with a split in the nail of her right index finger followed him with the other one. I saw the split when she nearly stuck the finger in my milk. Her intention was to stay and arrange things for us, but Wolfe sent her away.

He lifted the covers from the servers with a sanguine hope and a stern misgiving fighting for the mastery in his expression. When no steam came out he looked so disconcerted I could have wept. He bent over the server and glared into it incredulously.

“This is dandy,” I asserted, rubbing my hands with pleasure. “Jellied consommé and a good big Waldorf salad and iced tea and these cute little wafer things—”

“Good God,” he muttered, stupefied.

It was from purely selfish motives that I went downstairs myself and found somebody and requisitioned a pair of lamb chops and a pot of coffee.

The trays were empty, and Wolfe was sipping the last of the coffee, which I admit wasn’t hot enough, in gloomy dissatisfaction, when the door opened and Inspector Cramer entered.

“How-do-you-do, sir,” Wolfe snapped. “I’m busy.”

“So I hear.” Cramer crossed to a chair and sat down, got out a cigar and stuck it in his mouth and took it out again. His big phiz was redder even than usual, from the heat.

He observed, as if passing the time of day, “I understand you’re working for Mr. Dunn.”

Wolfe grunted offensively.

“He had a rotten lunch,” I explained.

Cramer nodded. “So did I. At a drugstore counter.” He surveyed Wolfe. “You look about the way I feel. I hate these damn high-life mix-ups. The lousy politicians. Every time you turn around you see a stop sign. I’ve got a message for you from the commissioner.”

Wolfe just grunted again.

Cramer put his cigar between his teeth and said, “Maybe you’ve heard of him, Police Commissioner Hombert. He wants you to understand that there’s to be no publicity on this thing until he says so. He also says that you’re so intelligent it will be easy for you to appreciate the necessity for a lot of discretion in a case like this, involving the people it does, and that naturally you’ll co-operate with me. For instance, if you were to tell me what that mob was doing in your office yesterday, we’d call that co-operation.”

“Ask them,” Wolfe suggested.

“I have. They’re pretty remarkable. Most of them seem to be nearly as eccentric as you are. Except Mrs. Dunn, she’s fairly levelheaded, and Prescott the lawyer. Prescott told me about the will. They say they went to ask you to take it up with Miss Karn and come to an understanding with her. Since when have you been a board of arbitration?”

Wolfe muttered, “Go ahead. Come to the point.”

“I will. Is that what they went to your office for? To get you to make a deal with Miss Karn?”

“Yes.”

“But you had Miss Karn right there, didn’t you? By the way, you might have told me who she was when I asked you, but I suppose that would be too much to expect. Anyway, these people have all got tongues in their heads, and they had their lawyer along. What was it they wanted you to do that they couldn’t do themselves?”

Wolfe shrugged. “They had been informed that I am able, astute, discreet and unscrupulous.”

“Hell, I could have told them that.” Cramer removed his cigar from his mouth and studied the tip of it. “I’ve been trying to figure out what they needed you for when they already had a good lawyer. I like things to be plausible. What if they suspected Miss Karn had murdered Hawthorne, and they wanted you to sort of collect evidence and put it in shape? That would be a good job for a detective. Then Miss Karn could sign an agreement to let them have the dough, or most of it, and you could decide the evidence wasn’t good enough to justify accusing her of murder. So everybody would be satisfied, except maybe Hawthorne, but he was dead. How do you like that way of figuring it?”

“I think it’s clumsy,” said Wolfe judiciously. “If they regarded me as capable of compromising with a murderer, they would also have thought it likely that I would retain the evidence and blackmail them the rest of their lives. Not to mention the detail that they weren’t aware Hawthorne had been murdered. You saw their shock and surprise when you told them he had.”