Рекс Стаут: Gambit

And so forth. While I was going through the files Lon made a couple of phone calls and received a couple, but he kept me in a corner of his eye. Presumably the idea was that if Wolfe was particularly interested in one of that quartet I might show it by a flicker of the eye or a twist of the lip. Not wanting to disappoint him, I eased a slip of paper out and slipped it up my cuff, and later, when I put the folders back on his desk, he asked, “Would you like a copy of the item in your sleeve?”

“All right, I tried,” I said, and fingered it out and forked it over. All it had on it, scribbled in pencil, was 2/8 11:40 A.M. LC says MJN says too much chess A.R. I said, “If LC means Lon Cohen that may settle it.”

“Go climb a tree.” He dropped it in the wastebasket. “Anything else?”

“A few little details. What’s Sally Blount like?”

“I thought Blount was out of it.”

“He is, but she may have some facts we need, and it’ll help to know what to expect when I see her. Is she a man-eater?”

“No. Of course she’s still an angle with us, and presumably with the cops. With most girls of her age and class you’ll find a little dirt, sometimes a lot, if you dig, but apparently not with her. She seems to be clean, which should be newsworthy but isn’t. We have nothing on her, even with Paul Jerin, and I doubt if the cops have.”

“College?”

“Bennington. Graduated last year.”

“How about her mother? Of course she’s not an angle, but she may have some facts too. Know anything about her?”

“I sure do. I’ve told my wife that she needn’t wonder what I’ll do if she dies. I’ll get Anna Blount. I don’t know how, but I’ll get her.”

“So you know her?”

“I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen her a few times, and once is enough. Don’t ask me why. It’s not just looks or the call of the glands. She’s probably a witch and doesn’t know it. If she knew it it would show, and that would spoil it. As you say, she’s not an angle, but, with her husband arrested for murder, she’s news, and it appears that I’m not the only one. She attracts. She pulls.”

“And?”

“Apparently there is no and. Apparently she’s clean too. It’s hard to believe, but I’d like to believe it. As you know, I’m happily married, and my wife is healthy, and I hope she lives forever, but it’s nice to know that such a one as Anna Blount is around just in case. I can’t understand why I don’t dream about her. What the hell, a man’s dreams are private. If you see her be sure to tell me how you take it.”

“Glad to.” I rose. “I’m not thanking you this time because I gave more than I got.”

“I want more. Damn it, Archie, just a little something for tomorrow?”

I told him he would get more if and when there was more, got my coat and hat from the other chair, and went.

I walked downtown. That would have been ideal for arranging my mind, my legs working, my lungs taking in plenty of good cold air, and a few snowflakes coming at me and then away from me, if there had been anything in my mind to arrange. Even worse, my mind was refusing to cooperate on the main point. I had bought the assumption that Matthew Blount was innocent, but my mind hadn’t. It kept trying to call my attention to the known facts, which was subversive.

Headed south on Sixth Avenue, my watch said 4:30 as I approached Thirty-fifth Street, and instead of turning I continued downtown. Wolfe wouldn’t come down from the plant rooms until six o’clock, and there was no point in going home just to sit at my desk and try to get my mind on something useful when there was nothing useful to get it on. So I kept going, clear to Twelfth Street, turned left, stopped half way down the long block, and focused on a four-story brick building, painted gray with green trim, across the street. A brass plate to the right of the door, nice and shiny, said GAMBIT CLUB. I crossed the street, entered the vestibule, tried the door, but it was locked, pushed the button, got a click, opened the door, and entered.

Of course I was just kidding my mind. There wasn’t a chance in a million that I would get any new facts for it to switch to, but at least I could show it that I was in charge. There was a long rack in the hall, and, as I disposed of my coat and hat, a man appeared in an open doorway on the right and said, “Yes, sir?”

It was Bernard Nash, the steward. There had been a picture of him in the Gazette. He was tall and narrow with a long sad face. I said, “I’m checking something,” and made for the doorway, but without giving me room to pass he asked, “Are you from the police?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a gorilla. How often do you have to see a face?”

He would probably have asked to see my buzzer if I hadn’t kept moving, and I brushed against him as I went through. It was the big room. Evidently the chess tables had been specially placed for the affair, for there were now more than a dozen — more like two dozen — and three of them were in use, with a couple of kibitzers at one. Halting only for a quick glance around, I headed for an open door at the rear end, followed by the steward. If Table Six, Blount’s, had been in the row at the left wall, he had been sitting only ten feet from the door to the library.

The library was almost small enough to be called cozy, with four leather chairs, each with a reading light and a stand with an ashtray. Book shelves lined two walls and part of a third. In a corner was a chess table with a marble top, with yellow and brown marble for the squares, and the men spread around, not on their home squares. The Gazette had said that the men were of ivory and Kokcha lapis lazuli and they and the table had belonged to and been played with by Louis XIV, and that the men were kept in the position after the ninth move of Paul Morphy’s most famous game, his defeat of the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard in Paris in 1858.

The couch was backed up to the left wall, but there was no table, just stands at the ends. I looked at Nash. “You’ve moved the table.”

“Certainly.” Since I was just a cop, so he thought, no “sir” was required. “We were told things could be moved.”

“Yeah, the inspector would, with members in the high brackets. If it had been a dump he’d have kept it sealed for a month. Has your watch got a second hand?”

He glanced at his wrist. “Yes.”

“All right, time me. I’m checking. I’m going down to the kitchen and coming right back. I’ll time it too, but two watches are better than one. When I say ‘go.’ ” I looked at my watch. “Go.” I moved.

There were only two doors besides the one we had entered by, and one of them was to the hall, and near the other one, at the far end, was a little door that had to be to an old-fashioned dumb-waiter shaft. Crossing to it — not the dumb-waiter — I opened it and stepped through. There was a small landing and stairs down, narrow and steep. Descending, I was in the kitchen, larger than you would expect, and nothing old-fashioned about it. Stainless steel and fluorescent lights. A round little bald guy in a white apron, perched on a stool with a magazine, squinted at me and muttered, “My God, another one.”

“We keep the best till the last.” I was brusque. “You’re Laghi?”

“Call me Tony. Why not?”

“I don’t know you well enough.” I turned and mounted the stairs. In the library, Nash, who apparently hadn’t moved, looked at his watch and said, “One minute and eighteen seconds.”

I nodded. “Close enough. You said in your statement that when Blount went down the first time to get the chocolate he was in the kitchen about six minutes.”

“That’s wrong. I said about three minutes. If you don’t — Oh. You’re trying to — I see. I know what I said in my statement.”