Rex Stout - Where There's a Will

I stood and let the conviction seep into my soul. “I can’t say it any better than that,” I muttered bitterly to myself. “Normal people aren’t supposed to understand what geniuses are up to. If only I had sunk my toe in his fundament as he went through those curtains.”

A siren sounded from around the corner, a little green car came curving into 67th, jerked to a stop at the curb, and two men in uniform hopped out and started for me. I had left the door ajar, and swung it open for them to enter.

That was the beginning of as dreary and unprofitable a six-hour stretch as I’ve ever struggled through. By midnight I was ready to bite holes in the windows. On account of the kind of individuals involved, by their being on the premises if by nothing else, the whole damn city and county payroll showed up sooner or later, from the commissioner and the district attorney on down. Wherever you stepped it was on a toe. As far as picking up any items for myself was concerned, I had about as much chance as a poodle in a pack of bloodhounds. Throughout the entire session, about every ten minutes someone came up to me and asked me where Nero Wolfe was. That alone got so obnoxious I had to grit my teeth to keep from slugging some high official.

Soon after the first squad men arrived, Lieutenant Bronson had me in the music room. That interview was brief and unimportant; about all he wanted was the details of our finding the body. I gave it to him complete and straight. I wouldn’t have minded keeping our knowledge of Daisy’s addiction to eavesdropping for the firm’s private use, in case it should come in handy, but I had to give a reason for my looking behind the bar, and it was too risky to invent one, since he had already had a talk with Dunn, and Dunn had probably told him just how it was. So I did too. When it was over he chased me upstairs. I was to remain and so forth. The first thing he asked me, and the last, was “Where’s Wolfe?”

I went in the library and saw there was no one there but Ritchie of the Cosmopolitan Trust, sitting looking glum and offended, and a dick I didn’t know, so I went out again. Prescott came trotting down the hall, saw me, stopped beside me, glanced around, and asked in an undertone, “Where’s Wolfe?”

“I don’t know. Don’t ask me again. I don’t know.”

“He must have—”

“I don’t know!”

“Don’t talk so loud. We’ve got to keep Gene Davis out of this.” He was urgent, pleading. “No one saw him but Wolfe and you and me. I’m sure if Wolfe were here I could convince him. They mustn’t know Gene was here. When they ask you—”

“Not a chance. You’d better compose your faculties. The butler let him in.”

“But I can tell Turner, I can persuade him—”

“No, sir. There are about nine things the cops won’t find out from me, but that isn’t one of them. Take my advice and never conspire with a butler.”

He grabbed my lapel. “But I tell you, if they learn Davis was here, if they once get started after him—”

“I can’t help it, Mr. Prescott. Sorry. No one likes to keep a secret from a cop any more than I do, but that would be just begging for trouble. I’ll do this much, I’ll make them ask for it, I won’t volunteer it—”

Footsteps from above, on the next flight of stairs, interrupted me. It was Andy Dunn coming down. He caught sight of us, and told Prescott his father would like to see him in Mrs. Hawthorne’s room. Prescott looked at me half angrily and half pleadingly, and I shook my head. Andy addressed me:

“Dad would like to see Nero Wolfe too. Where is he?”

I answered that one, and they went off, and I moseyed to the end of the corridor and sat on a bench. After a while I started down to the main floor to look over fresh arrivals, but got shooed back up before I touched bottom, and went to the library and appropriated a comfortable chair. It was while I was there that a maid came around with sandwiches and milk and ginger ale, and I took enough to last a while. The next scene I had any part in was when a squad man appeared and said that Mr. Dunn himself had suggested that everyone in the house submit to having their fingerprints taken, and the others had agreed, and he was prepared to oblige me. Having just wasted a lot of breath trying to persuade the dick on guard in the library that it would be conducive to the interest of law and order to let me use the phone, I was sore. I refused, and said my prints were on file downtown, since I was a licensed detective. He said he knew that, but it would be more convenient to take them with the others. I said it would be more convenient for me to go home and go to bed, since it was after dark, and he could go sit on a trylon. I admit I was churlish, but so were they. All I wanted to do was phone the house and ask Fritz how he was.

I got tired of the library and wandered out to the hall again. The three kids were there, Celia and Sara sitting on a bench and Andy standing in front of them, talking in whispers. They looked at me and stopped whispering, but had nothing to say to me. Not wanting to interfere with any childish secrets, I went on up to the next floor. The third door on the left was standing wide open, and a glance through as I passed by revealed May and June seated side by side on a sofa. I noted that May had exchanged the old faded gown for something fresher, a white dress with pink spots. At the street end of the hall was a window, and I went there and stood a while, looking down at the confusion outdoors. Parked cars were solid at the curb on both sides, and streams of both pedestrian and vehicle traffic were being kept moving by a scattering of cops. The radio certainly is a blessing for people who like their meat fresh. Standing there surveying the bustling scene, I turned from time to time at the sound of footsteps behind me, but it was never anything more exciting than one of the inmates en route to or from the stairs, a dick who was obviously a messenger from the ground floor.

On two occasions, however, the footsteps kept coming until they got me. The first time it was Osric Stauffer. He gazed at me from ten paces off, evidently decided I was the customer he was calling on, and came clear up to me before he spoke.

“I understand Nero Wolfe isn’t around. If you—”

“I don’t know where he is,” I said firmly.

“So Dunn tells me. But if you — the fact is, I was looking for you before — when they sent for me—”

I wouldn’t have said that at that moment he was living up to much of anything. He was close to pitiful. He was trying to keep from trembling but couldn’t, and his voice sounded as if his throat was badly in need of oiling.

I said, “Here I am, but I’m in one hell of a temper. You don’t look very happy yourself.”

“I suppose — I don’t. This ghastly — right here — with all of us here.”

“Yeah, sure. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been all alone in the house.”

I was hoping he’d resent that enough to quit looking pathetic, but his mind was too occupied even to realize it was an ill-timed jest. All he did was move ten inches closer to me and speak in a lower and more urgent tone:

“Do you want to earn a thousand dollars?”

“Certainly. Don’t you?”

“For nothing,” he said. “Really nothing. I’ve just had a talk with Skinner, the district attorney. I didn’t tell him about my being behind those curtains — you know — when you came in and saw me. It would have been — it would have sounded too damned silly.” He pulled one of the poorest imitations of a jolly little laugh in my long experience. “It was silly — the silliest thing I ever did in my life. I’ll give you — I mean, when they question you — if you forget you saw me there — you’ll earn a thousand dollars — just to save me the embarrassment — I haven’t got that much with me, but you can take my word—”