Rex Stout - Where There's a Will

“You — you knew—” June was sputtering. “How did you know about that woman?”

“Don’t be a goof, Mom,” said Sara sympathetically. “I wasn’t born deaf, and I’m past twenty-one. You were just my age when you wrote Affairs of a Titmouse. ”

“Thank you very much, Miss Dunn.” Wolfe put the picture under a paperweight on top of Daisy Hawthorne’s card. “I’ll remember to return it.” He turned to the lawyer. “About Miss Karn? You know her, do you?”

“Not very well,” said Prescott. “That is — I’ve known her, in a way, for about six years. She was a stenographer in our office — my firm.”

“Indeed. Your personal stenographer?”

“Oh, no. We have thirty or more of them — it’s a large office. She was just one of them for a couple of years, and then she became the secretary of the junior partner, Mr. Davis. It was in Mr. Davis’s office that Mr. Hawthorne first met her. Not long after that—” Prescott stopped, and looked uncomfortable. “But that’s of no present significance. I wished to explain how I happened to know her. She left our employ about three years ago — uh — apparently at the suggestion of Mr. Hawthorne—”

“Apparently?”

“Well—” Prescott shrugged. “Admittedly, then. Since he himself made no attempt to be secretive about it, there is no call for caution from me.”

“The Hawthornes,” said May sweetly, “are much too egotistic to be sneaks. ‘How we apples swim.’”

“Obviously he wasn’t sneaking,” Wolfe agreed, glancing at the picture under the paperweight, “when he paraded with her on Fifth Avenue.”

“I think I should warn you,” Prescott said, “that your task will be a difficult one.”

“I expect it to be. To persuade anybody to turn loose of four million dollars.”

“I know, but I mean exceptionally difficult.” Prescott shook his head doubtfully. “God knows I wish you luck, but from what I know of Miss Karn... it’ll be a job. Ask Stauffer, he’ll tell you what he thinks of it. That’s why we asked him to come down here with us.”

“Stauffer?”

A voice came from the left: “I’m Osric Stauffer.”

Wolfe looked at the good-looking face that was living up to something. “Oh. Are you...” He trailed it off.

The face looked faintly annoyed. “Osric Stauffer of Daniel Cullen and Company. The foreign department was under the direction of Mr. Hawthorne and I was next to him. Also I was fairly intimate with him.”

So it was Daniel Cullen and Company he was living up to. Judging from the way he had been hovering in the neighborhood of April Hawthorne, I had guessed wrong entirely; I had thought he was dignifying a passion.

Wolfe inquired, “You know Miss Karn, do you?”

“I have met her, yes.” Stauffer’s voice was clipped and precise. “What Mr. Prescott was referring to, I went to see her this morning about this will business. I was requested to go by him and Mrs. Dunn — and in a way, unofficially, as a representative of my firm. A will contest — this sort of thing — would be highly undesirable in the case of a Cullen partner.”

“So you saw Miss Karn this morning?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I made no headway at all. Naturally, in my position, I have been entrusted with some difficult and delicate negotiations, and I’ve dealt with some tough customers, but I’ve never struck anything tougher than Miss Karn. Her position was that it would be improper, and even indecent, to interfere with the wishes of a dead man as he had himself expressed them, with regard to the disposal of his own property. Therefore she couldn’t even discuss it, and she wouldn’t. I told her she would have a contest to fight and might lose it all. She said she had a great respect for justice and would cheerfully accept any decision a court might make, provided there was no higher court to appeal to.”

“Did you offer terms?”

“No, not specific terms. I didn’t get that far. She was—” Stauffer seemed momentarily embarrassed how to put it. “She wasn’t inclined to listen to anything about the will, the purpose of my call. She attempted to presume on our comparatively slight acquaintance.”

“Do you mean she tried to make love to you?”

“Oh, no.” Stauffer blushed, glanced involuntarily at April Hawthorne, and blushed more. “No, not that, not at all. I mean merely that she acted as if my visit were — just a friendly visit. She is an extremely clever woman.”

“And you think she wasn’t scared by the threat of a contest?”

“I’m positive she wasn’t. I never saw anyone less scared.”

Wolfe grunted. He turned to June with a frown. “What’s the point,” he demanded, “of asking me to bring your game down with ammunition that’s already been fired?”

“That is the point,” June asserted. “That’s why we came to you. If a simple threat would do it, it would have been simple. I know it’s a hard job. That’s why we’ll gladly pay the fee you’ll charge, if you succeed.”

“It is also,” May put in, “why something my sister said to you at the beginning was untrue. She said we didn’t need a detective, but we do. You will have to find a way to bring pressure on Miss Karn much more compelling than threat of a court contest of the will.”

“I see.” Wolfe grimaced. “No wonder I don’t like fights about dead men’s property. They’re always ugly fights.”

“This one isn’t,” June declared. “It will be if Daisy and that woman get it into a court, but our part of it isn’t. What’s ugly about our trying to avoid a stinking scandal by persuading that woman that three or four million dollars of our brother’s fortune is all she’s entitled to? If her avarice and stubbornness make the persuasion difficult and expensive...”

“And even if it were ugly,” said May quietly, “it would still have to be done. I think, Mr. Wolfe, we’ve told you everything you need to know. Will you do it?”

Wolfe looked at the clock on the wall. I felt sorry for him. He didn’t like the job, but he had to take it. Moreover, he permitted nothing whatever to interfere with his custom of spending four hours a day in the plant rooms on the roof — from nine to eleven in the morning and from four to six in the afternoon — and the clock said five minutes to four. He looked at me, gave me a scowl for my grin, and glanced up at the clock again.

He rose from his chair as abruptly as his bulk would permit.

“I’ll do it,” he announced gruffly. “And now, if you don’t mind, I have an appointment for four o’clock—”

“I know!” Sara Dunn exclaimed. “You’re going up to the orchids. I’d love to see them—”

“Some other time, Miss Dunn. I’m in no mood for it. Shall I report to you, Mrs. Dunn? Or Mr. Prescott?”

“Either. Or both.” June was out of her chair.

“Both, then. Get names and addresses, Archie.”

I did so. Prescott’s office and home, the Hawthorne house on 67th Street, where they all were temporarily, and, not least important, Naomi Karn’s apartment on Park Avenue. They straggled into the hall, and I left the front to Fritz. Stauffer, I noticed, was solicitous at April Hawthorne’s elbow. May was the last one out of the office, having lingered for a word with Wolfe which I didn’t catch. I heard the front door close, and Fritz glanced in on his way back to the kitchen.

“Pfui!” said Wolfe.

“And wowie,” I agreed. “But at that they’re not vultures. I’m going to marry April. Then after a bit I’ll divorce her and marry her blond secretary—”

“That will do. Confound it, anyway. Well, you have two hours—”

“Sure.” I assumed a false cheerfulness. “Let me say it for you. I am to have Miss Karn here at six o’clock. Or a few minutes before, so as not to keep you waiting.”