Rex Stout - Where There's a Will

“The reason I’m late, Mr. Wolfe, after Archie phoned I thought I’d just lie there a minute and get things straight in my mind, and after the night I’ve had I wouldn’t have been much good anyway, and now I’m—”

“You went to sleep again,” said Wolfe ominously.

“Yes, sir, and the missus should of woke me but she didn’t. Anyhow, now my head’s on my shoulders and I’m strung like a lyre. As I just told Orrie, I can do more—”

“Who told who?”

“Orrie Gather. I told him I can—”

“Where did you see Orrie?”

“Down at the corner just now. I—”

“What corner?”

“Out front. Across the street. I told him—”

“Be quiet.” Wolfe looked at me and snapped, “Go and find out.”

I hopped for the hall, trotted downstairs and on out to the street, crossed to the other side, and turned left. He was there at the exit of an areaway. As I passed I gave him a sign, and then went on and turned the corner. I waited, and he joined me.

“What do you mean,” I demanded, “chinning with Fred when you’re solo?”

“Chin yourself,” he retorted. “I wasn’t chinning, he was. I chased him.”

“And what are you doing here? Got a date with a governess?”

“No, Colonel, I’m working. You baboon, what do you think I’m doing? She’s in there.”

“Where?”

“The house you came out of.”

“I’ll be damned. How long ago?”

“We arrived at 2:28. Twenty-seven minutes ago.”

“I am damned. Okay, sit on it.”

I trotted back the way I had come, pushed the button and was admitted by the butler. I stopped in the entrance hall to consider things, and he stood and looked at me until I waved him away. The point was that knowing Wolfe as I did, I was aware that if I went up to him and reported that Naomi Karn was somewhere in the house, he would immediately ask, “Where?” So I called the butler back and inquired, “Could you tell me where Miss Karn is? The lady who arrived about half an hour ago.”

“Yes, sir. She is in the living room with Mrs. Hawthorne.”

It sounded goofy to me. I decided that eyesight was better than hearsay, made for the wide doorway to the living room, and went on through; and saw at a glance that sight was just as goofy as sound. On one of the chairs toward the far end was Naomi Karn, in the same blue linen thing she had worn to Wolfe’s the day before, and on another one, directly facing her, was Daisy Hawthorne. They both looked at me, at least Naomi did, and the veil turned my way.

I said, “Excuse me,” and beat it for the hall and the stairs. There would be nothing to tell Wolfe, since of course it was in his presence that Daisy had been informed of the caller who had arrived.

But, opening the library door and entering, I saw that was wrong. There certainly was something to tell him. He was talking to Fred, who stood twisting his hat and looking uncomfortable, and Daisy Hawthorne was sitting there in her chair.

Evidently I lost my aplomb. I may even have stared with my jaw hanging open. Anyhow, I came to when Wolfe fired at me:

“What’s the matter with you? Palsy?”

Fred Durkin says I tittered. I did not. I merely said in a composed tone, “Mr. Brenner would like to speak to you a moment privately. In the hall.”

He glared at me suspiciously, then lifted his bulk with a grunt, crossed, and passed through the door which I opened. I pulled the door shut.

“Well?” he demanded.

I said in an undertone, “We’re being stalked. Engage in earnest whispered conversation, mumble umble, diddie riggie...”

The footsteps I had heard became Mr. John Charles Dunn and his wife June. Coming up the stairs, they reached our level, and, turning for the corridor, saw us. Dunn called:

“Have you seen Prescott, Mr. Wolfe? He’s here and wants to talk with you.”

Wolfe replied that he hadn’t seen the lawyer but would do so presently. Dunn nodded and, his wife beside him, dragged his feet along the corridor to the next flight of stairs. As soon as they were out of sight I switched to English again:

“Naomi Karn is down in the living room, but that’s not what gave me palsy. Daisy Hawthorne is there with her, talking to her.”

He growled, “What the devil did you drag me out here for? If you think this is a time for childish flummery—”

“No, sir, I don’t. Far from it. I’m telling you, the veiled widow is there in the library. She is also downstairs chatting with Naomi Karn. I just this second saw her. Someone’s playing a funny joke. But who’s the joke on, us up here, or Naomi down there?”

“Do you mean to tell me someone is masquerading—”

“Yeah, that’s the idea. These Hawthorne girls certainly are cards. But which is which?”

“In the living room talking with Miss Karn?”

“Yep.”

“You just saw them?”

“Yep.”

“Did you see Orrie?”

“Yep. She led him here at 2:28 and was admitted by the butler.”

He frowned at me a moment, pursing his lips, and then said, “Ask Fred to come here.”

I did so. Wolfe told him: “Go on up there and do your utmost to keep awake. Don’t lose the letter to Mr. Ames. Don’t get in a fight. I’ll be either here or at home.”

“Mr. Wolfe, I’m sorry I—”

“So am I. Go on.”

Fred went. Wolfe eyed me. “Now. We don’t need to flounder around with this. I’ll sit where I was. You sit beyond her. I’ll ask you to hand me something, and as you pass her you will lift that confounded veil.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I don’t blame you. Please open the door.”

That was one of the times I would have resigned on the spot but for the practical certainty that he would have given the job to Johnny Keems out of pure cussedness. I am not a softy. I once smacked a dainty little Cuban lassie out of her senses when she came to the office with a dagger in her sock, with the intention of presenting it to Nero Wolfe point first because he had draped a smuggling job around the neck of her blackeyed boy friend. But as I followed Wolfe back into the library and obeyed his instructions by taking a chair the other side of our version of Daisy Hawthorne, I was gulping down repugnance till I could feel it sticking in my throat.

However, I did it. I mean I tried to. First Wolfe asked a few questions and got her to talk a little. As near as I could tell, her voice, high-pitched, with a strain in it that gave you the feeling that it wasn’t coming from a mouth, was exactly the same as it had been in the office the day before. I decided it was either Daisy herself or the best mimic I had ever heard; and it was in my mind, naturally, that while a great actress isn’t necessarily a fine mimic, by public repute April Hawthorne was. Wolfe tried another trick, asking her what time it was, but when she looked at her wrist watch she did so with exactly the same slant to her head, using the left eye apparently, as the previous day when she had read the paper he gave her.

Wolfe asked me to hand him the notes I had taken of the interview with the others. I got up and started for him. When I was even with her chair I stumbled and lurched against her and grabbed to keep from falling, and what I got hold of was the lower edge of the veil. I knew it was anchored and would take a good jerk, and since it had to be done I was going to do it right, but I simply wasn’t prepared for what happened. A hurricane hit me. An awful screech split the air, and thirty wildcats flew at my face, which wasn’t protected by any veil, with all their claws working. Being stubborn, I was going on through and die fighting, but Wolfe called my name sharply and I jammed on the brake. She was ten feet away, and I never have been able to figure out how she got there and performed mayhem simultaneously.