Рекс Стаут - The Final Deduction

“I was only seventeen, just out of high school. But of course the situation was different; it was easier for me than it would be for you. My mother wasn’t wealthy like yours. I couldn’t hit her for a hundred or a thousand or whatever I happened to need.”

“Hell, neither can I. It’s not that easy.”

“It may not be easy, but the fact remains that she has it, and all you have to do is use the right approach. With me, with my mother, that wasn’t the problem. She was a born female tyrant, and that was all there was to it. There wasn’t a single goddam thing, big or little, that I could decide on my own. While your mother was talking I couldn’t help thinking it was just too bad you couldn’t do what I did.”

The drinks came and we sampled them. Noel’s sample was a gulp. “What did you do?” he asked.

“I told her to go to hell. One nice hot June day, the day after I graduated from high school, I told her to go to hell, and beat it. Of course I don’t mean it literally, that it’s too bad you can’t do what I did. It’s a different situation. You wouldn’t have to. Now that Jimmy Vail’s dead, you’re the man of the house. All you’d have to do is just make it clear that you’ve got two feet of your own. Not in general terms like that, not just tell her to her face, ‘Mother, I’ve got two feet of my own,’ that wouldn’t get you anywhere. It would have to be on a specific issue, and you couldn’t ask for a better one than her taking back a definite promise she made you. That would be a beaut. You could tell her, ‘Mother, you said I could have that money if I found it, and on the strength of that I made a deal with Nero Wolfe, and he’ll hold me to it, and I’m going to hold you to it.”’

He took a swallow of gin and tonic. “She’d say it’s her money.”

“But it isn’t. Not after what she told you before witnesses. She has given it to you, with only one condition attached, that you find it, and therefore it’s a gift and you wouldn’t have to pay tax on it. Granting that there’s a slim chance of finding it, if we do find it you’ll have four hundred thousand dollars in the till after you give Nero Wolfe his cut — no tax, no nothing. And even if we don’t find it, you’ll have let your mother know that you’ve got your own two feet, not by telling her so but by standing on them on a specific issue. There’s another point, but we’ll skip it.”

“Why? What is it?”

I took a sip of scotch and soda. “It will be important only if Mr. Wolfe finds the money. If he does, one-fifth will be his, and don’t think it won’t. If your mother tries to keep him from getting it, or keeping it, the fur will fly, and some of it will be yours. If it gets to a court, you’ll testify. For him.”

“It wouldn’t. It’s not the money that’s biting my mother, it’s Jimmy. It’s Wolfe’s saying that Jimmy was murdered. Why the hell did he tell Uncle Ralph that?”

“He told you too.”

“I had sense enough not to repeat it.” He put his empty glass down. “Look, Goodwin, I don’t give a damn. If Jimmy was murdered, someone that was there killed him, and I still don’t give a damn. Of course it wasn’t my mother, but even if it was, I’m not sure I’d give a damn even then. I’m supposed to be old enough to vote, but by God, the way I’ve had to knuckle under, you’d think I still wet the bed at night. You say I wouldn’t have to do what you did, but if I had four hundred thousand dollars that’s exactly what I’d do. I’d tell my mother to go to hell. I’m not as dumb as I look. I knew what I was doing Wednesday evening. I knew my mother was so glad her darling Jimmy was back she wouldn’t stop to think, and I asked her about the money in front of witnesses, and I intended to go to Nero Wolfe the next morning, but the next morning Jimmy was dead, and that made it different. Now Wolfe has told Uncle Ralph Jimmy was murdered, I don’t know why, and he has told my mother, and you tell me to show her I’ve got my own two feet. Balls. What if I haven’t even got one foot?”

I signaled the white apron for refills. “Let’s try something,” I said and got out my notebook and pen and started writing. I dated a blank page at the top and wrote:

To Nero Wolfe: I hereby confirm the oral agreement we made yesterday. My mother, Mrs. Althea Vail, told me on Wednesday, April 26, and repeated on Friday, April 28, that if I find the $500,000 she gave a kidnaper on Tuesday, April 25, or any part of it, I may keep it for my own. Therefore that money belongs to me if I find it. I have engaged you to help me find it, and I have agreed that if you do find it, or any part of it, you are to keep one-fifth of the amount you find as payment for your services. I hereby confirm that agreement.

The refills had come, and I sampled mine as I read it over. Tearing the sheet out, I handed it to Noel and watched his face. He took his time, then looked up. “So what?”

“So you’d have a foot. I don’t really expect you to sign it, I doubt if you have the nerve, you’ve knuckled under too long, but if you did sign it, you wouldn’t have to tell your mother you were going to do so-and-so and stick to it. You could tell her you had done so-and-so, you had come here with me and talked it over and confirmed your agreement with Mr. Wolfe in writing. She couldn’t send you to bed without any supper because you’ve already had your supper. Of course legally that thing isn’t important, because you’re already bound legally. Mr. Wolfe has a witness to his oral agreement with you. Me.”

He started to read it over again, quit halfway, put his glass down, and extended his hand. “Give me that pen.” I gave it to him, and he signed his name, pushed the paper across to me, picked up his glass, and raised it to eye level. “Excelsior! To freedom!” He put the glass to his mouth and drained it. A piece of ice slipped out and fell to the table, and he picked it up and threw it at the bartender across the room, missing by a yard. He shook his head, tittered, and asked me, “What did your mother do when you told her to go to hell?”

Since I had what I wanted, it would have suited me all right if we had been bounced, but apparently Noel was not a stranger at Barney’s. The barkeep took no action beyond occasional glances in our direction to see if more ice was coming. Noel wanted to talk. The idea seemed to be that I had made a hero of him, and he wanted to know who or what had made a hero of me at the early age of seventeen. I was willing to spend another half-hour and another drink on him, but I suspected that he didn’t want to go home until it was late enough for him to go to bed without stopping in his mother’s room to say good night, and that might mean a couple of hours. So I began looking at my watch and worrying about being late for a date, and at ten o’clock I paid for the drinks and left him.

It was 10:26 when I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone and pushed the button. When Fritz opened the door he aimed a thumb to his rear, toward the office, signifying that there was company. I asked him who, and he told me in what he thinks is a whisper but is actually a kind of smothered croak, “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” I told him, “Rub off all fingerprints and burn the papers,” and went to the office.

You don’t have to believe me, but I would have known after one look at him, even if Fritz hadn’t told me. It’s mostly the eyes and the jaw. An FBI man spends so much time pretending he’s looking somewhere else that his eyes get confused; they’re never quite sure it’s okay to admit they’re focused on you. His jaw is even worse off. It is given to understand that it belongs to a man who is intrepid, daring, dauntless, cool, long-headed, quick-witted, and hard as nails, but it is cautioned that he is also modest, polite, reserved, patient, bland, and never to be noticed in a crowd. No jaw on earth could handle that order. The only question is how often it will twitch, and sideways or up and down.