Рекс Стаут: Kill Now — Pay Later

I wouldn’t have been jolly even if it had been a wedding instead of a funeral, with Saul and Fred somewhere doing something, I had no idea where or what, and me spending the day convoying, on her personal errands, a girl on whom I had no designs, private or professional. The idea, according to Wolfe when I had gone up to his room at eight-thirty A.M. for instructions, was that it would be risky to let her go anywhere unattended. If I would prefer, I could get an operative to escort her and I could stay in the office to stand by. He knew damn well what I would prefer, to join Saul and Fred, and I knew damn well, he wouldn’t be blowing $17.50 an hour plus expenses if he hadn’t had a healthy notion that he was going to get something for it. But we had had that argument time and again, and there would have been no point in repeating it, especially when he was at breakfast.

So I spent the day bodyguarding, and it didn’t help much that the body I was guarding was 110 pounds of attractive female with a sad little face. I have nothing against sympathy when my mind is free, but it wasn’t. It was with Saul and Fred, and that was very frustrating because I didn’t know where they were. No doubt Elma’s friends got the impression that I was a fish.

When we finally got back to Manhattan and the friends had been dropped off at their addresses, and the rented limousine stopped in front of the old brownstone, it was after six o’clock. Elma paid the driver. Mounting the stoop with her and finding that the door wasn’t bolted, I knew that at least nothing had blown up, but, stepping inside, I saw that someone had blown in. There on the hall rack were objects that I recognized: a brown wool cap, a gray hat, a blue hat, and three coats. As I took Elma’s coat I told her, “Go up and lie down. There’s company in the office. Inspector Cramer, Saul Panzer, and Fred Durkin.”

“But what — why are they...”

“The Lord only knows, or maybe Mr. Wolfe does. You’re all in. If you want—”

Her look stopped me. She was facing the door. I turned. There on the stoop was John Mercer, with a finger on the bell button, with Frances Cox and Philip Horan behind him. I told Elma to beat it and waited until she had turned up the stairs to open the door.

So Wolfe thought he had it. I wondered, as I let them in and took their things and sent them to the office. More than once I had seen him risk it when all he had hold of was the tip of the tail, even with a big fee at stake, and with no intake but a dollar bill already spent and then some — he could be trying it with no hold at all He knew I was home, since Saul had appeared at the office door when the bell had rung and had seen me admitting the guests, and I had a notion to go to the kitchen and sit down with a glass of milk. If I joined the party I would be merely a spectator, and it might be a bum show. But while I was considering it another guest appeared on the stoop. Andrew Busch. I had the door open before he pressed the button. Since I had crossed him off and I thought Wolfe had too, his coming meant there would be a real showdown, all or nothing, so I took him to the office and followed him in. And found that it was the full cast: Joan Ashby was on the couch at the left of my desk, with a mink coat, presumably not paid for, draped on her shoulders. Cramer was in the red leather chair. Saul and Fred were over by the big globe. Mercer, Horan, and Miss Cox were on yellow chairs in a row facing Wolfe’s desk, and there was a vacant one waiting for Busch. As I circled around the chairs Wolfe told Busch he was late, and Busch said something, and, as I sat, Cramer said he wanted Elma Vassos there.

Wolfe shook his head. “You are here by sufferance, Mr. Cramer, and you will either listen or leave, as agreed. As I told you on the phone, you can’t expect to interfere in your official capacity, since you have closed your investigation of the only death by violence in your jurisdiction that these people are connected with. Or you had closed it. You agreed to listen or leave. Do you want to leave?”

“Go ahead,” Cramer growled, “But Elma Vassos ought to be here.”

“She’s at hand if needed.” Wolfe’s eyes left him. “Mr. Mercer. I told you on the phone that if you would bring Miss Cox and Mr. Horan I thought we could come to an understanding about the actions Miss Vassos has brought It seemed desirable for Mrs. Ashby and Mr. Busch to be present, and I asked them to come. I’m on better ground than I was yesterday. Then I only knew that Mr. Vassos had not killed Dennis Ashby; now I know who did. I’ll tell you briefly—”

Cramer cut in. “Now I’m here officially! Now you’re saying you can name a murderer! How did you know Vassos hadn’t killed Ashby?”

Wolfe glared at him. “I have your word. Listen or leave.”

“I’ll listen to your answer to my question!”

“I was about to give it.” Wolfe turned to the others. “I was saying, I’ll tell you briefly how I knew that Miss Vassos came to me Tuesday evening to engage my services. She said that someone had lied to the police about her; that the police were persuaded that she had been seduced by Ashby and her father had found out about it and had killed Ashby and then himself; that none of that was true; that her father had told her I was the greatest man in the world; that she wanted to hire me to discover and establish the truth; and in payment she would give me all the dollar bills, some five hundred, I had paid her father for shining my shoes over a period of more than three years.”

He turned a palm up. “Very well. If she had in fact misbehaved, and if her misbehavior had been responsible for her father’s committing murder and suicide, what on earth could possibly have impelled her to come to me — the greatest man in the world to her father, and therefore a man not to be hoodwinked — and offer me what was for her a substantial sum to learn the truth and expose it? It was inconceivable. So I believed her.”

He turned his hand back over. “But I won’t pretend that I was moved to act by the dollar bills, by the pathos of Miss Vassos’ predicament, or by a passion for truth and justice. I was moved by pique. Monday afternoon, the day before Miss Vassos came, Mr. Cramer had told me that I was capable of shielding a murderer in order to avoid the inconvenience of finding another bootblack; and the next day, Wednesday, he told Mr. Goodwin that I had been beguiled by a harlot and ejected him from his office. That’s why—”

“I didn’t eject him!”

Wolfe ignored it. “That’s why Mr. Cramer is here. I could have asked the district attorney to send someone, but I preferred to have Mr. Cramer present.”

“I’m here and I’m listening,” Cramer rasped.

Wolfe turned to him. “Yes, sir. I’ll pass over the actions at law I advised Miss Vassos to bring; that was merely a ruse to make contact I needed to see these people. I already had a strong hint about the murderer. So had you.”

“If you mean a hint about somebody besides Vassos, you’re wrong. I hadn’t.”

“You had. I gave it to you, half of it, or Mr. Goodwin did, when he reported verbatim my conversation with Mr. Vassos Monday morning. He said he saw someone. He said that he had only said what if he told a cop he saw someone, but it was obvious that he actually had seen someone. Also he told his daughter that evening that there was something he hadn’t told either me or the police, and he was going to come and tell me in the morning and ask me what he ought to do; and he wouldn’t tell his daughter what it was. Surely that’s a strong hint.”

“Hint of what?”

“Then he knew, or thought he knew, who had killed Ashby. Where and when he had seen someone can only be conjectured, but it is highly probable that he had seen someone leaving Ashby’s room. Not entering; you know the times involved as well as I do, or better; he must have seen him leaving, at a moment which made it likely that he had been in that room when Ashby left it by the window. And it was someone whom he did not want to expose, for whom he had affection or regard, or who had put him under obligation. There I have the advantage of you. Mr. Vassos and I had formed the habit, while he was shining my shoes, of discussing the history of ancient Greece and the men who made it, and I knew the bent of his mind. He was tolerant of violence and even ferocity, and the qualities he most strongly contemned were ingratitude and disloyalty. That was, of course, not decisive, but it helped.”