Rex Stout: Eeny Meeny Murder Mo

Gregory Jett, thirty-six, single, had been made a firm member and allotted eleven per cent of the income because of his spectacular success in two big corporation cases. One of the corporations was controlled by Morton Sorell, and for the past year or so Jett had been a fairly frequent guest at the Sorell home on Fifth Avenue but had not been noticeably attentive to his hostess. His personal financial condition was one of the details Otis balked on, but he allowed it to be inferred that Jett was careless about the balance between income and outgo and was in the red in his account with the firm. Shortly after he had been made a member of the firm, about two years ago, he had dropped a fat chunk, Otis thought about forty thousand dollars, backing a Broadway show that flopped. A friend of his, female, had been in the cast. Whether he had had other expenses connected with a female friend or Mends Otis either didn’t know or wasn’t telling. He did say that he had gathered, mostly from remarks Bertha Aaron had made, that in recent months Jett had shown more attention to Ann Paige than their professional association required.

But when Wolfe suggested the possibility that Ann Paige had left through a window because she suspected, or even knew, what was in the wind, and had decided to take a hand, Otis wouldn’t buy it. He was having all he could do to swallow the news that one of his partners was a snake, and the idea that another of his associates might have been in on it was too much. He would tackle Ann Paige himself; she would no doubt have an acceptable explanation.

On Mrs. Morton Sorell he didn’t balk at all. Part of his information was known to everyone who read newspapers and magazines: that as Rita Ramsey she had dazzled Broadway with her performance in Reach for the Moon when she was barely out of her teens, that she had followed with even greater triumphs in two other plays, that she had spurned Hollywood, that she had also spurned Morton Sorell for two years and then abandoned her career to marry him. But Otis added other information that had merely been hinted at in gossip columns: that in a year the union had gone sour, that it became apparent that Rita had married Sorell only to get her lovely paws on a bale of dough, and that she was by no means going to settle for the terms of the marriage agreement. She wanted much more, more than half, and she had carefully begun to collect evidence of certain activities of Sorell’s, but he had got wise and consulted his attorneys, Otis, Edey, Heydecker and Jett, and they had stymied her — or thought they had. Otis had been sure they had, until he had read the copy of my statement. Now he was sure of nothing.

But he was still alive. When he got up to go, at two hours past midnight, he had bounced back some. He wasn’t nearly as jittery as he had been when he asked for a glass of water to take the pills. He hadn’t accepted Wolfe’s offer in so many words, but he had agreed to take no steps until he had heard further from Wolfe, provided he heard within thirty-two hours, by ten o’clock Wednesday morning. The only action he would take during that period would be to instruct Ann Paige to tell no one that he had read my statement and to learn why she had skedaddled. He didn’t think the police would tell him the contents of my statement, but if they did he would say that he would credit it only if it had corroboration. Of course he wanted to know what Wolfe was going to do, but Wolfe said he didn’t know and probably wouldn’t decide until after breakfast.

When I returned to the office after holding Otis’s coat for him and letting him out, Fritz was there.

“No,” Wolfe was saying grimly. “You know quite well I almost never eat at night.”

“But you had no dinner. An omelet, or at least—”

“No! Confound it, let me starve! Go to bed!”

Fritz looked at me, I shook my head, and he went. I sat down and spoke. “Do I get Saul and Fred and Orrie?”

“No.” He took in air through his nose and let it out through his mouth. “If I don’t know how I am going to proceed, how the deuce can I have errands for them?

“Rhetorical,” I said.

“It is not rhetorical. It’s logical. There are the obvious routine errands, but that would be witless. Find the cheap restaurant or lunchroom where they met? How many are there?”

“Oh, a thousand. More.”

He grunted. “Or question the entire personnel of that law office to learn which of those three men spoke at length with Miss Aaron yesterday afternoon? Or, assuming that he followed her here, left the office on her heels? Or which one cannot account for himself from five o’clock to ten minutes past six? Or find the nearby phone booth from which he dialed this number? Or investigate their relations with Mrs. Sorell? Those are all sensible and proper lines of inquiry, and by mid-morning Mr. Cramer and the District Attorney will have a hundred men pursuing them.”

“Two hundred. This is special.”

“So for me to put three men on them, four including you, would be frivolous. A possible procedure would be to have Mr. Otis get them here — Edey, Heydecker, and Jett. He could merely tell them that he has engaged me to investigate the murder that was committed in my house.”

“If they’re available. They’ll be spending most of the day at the DA’s office. By request.”

He shut his eyes and tightened his lips. I picked up the copy of my statement which Otis had surrendered, got the second carbon from my drawer, went and opened the safe, and put them on a shelf. I had closed the safe door and was twirling the knob when Wolfe spoke.

“Archie.”

“Yes sir.”

“Will they tackle Mrs. Sorell?”

“I doubt it. Not right away. What for? Since Cramer warned us that if we blab what Bertha Aaron told me we may be hooked for libel, which was kind of him, evidently he’s going to save it, and going to Mrs. Sorell would spill it.”

He nodded. “She is young and comely.”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen her offstage. You have seen pictures of her.”

“You have a flair for dealing with personable young women.”

“Sure. They melt like chocolate bars in the sun. But you’re exaggerating it a little if you think I can go to that specimen and ask her which member of the firm she met in a cheap restaurant or lunchroom and she’ll wrap her arms around me and murmur his name in my ear. It might take me an hour or more.”

“You can bring her here.”

“Maybe. Possibly. To see the orchids?”

“I don’t know.” He pushed the chair back and raised his bulk. “I am not myself. Come to my room at eight o’clock.” He headed for the hall.

At 10:17 that Tuesday morning I left the house, walked north fourteen short blocks and east six long ones, and entered the lobby of the Churchill. I walked instead of flagging a taxi for two reasons: because I had had less than five hours’ sleep and needed a lot of oxygen, especially from the neck up, and because eleven o’clock was probably the earliest Mrs. Morton Sorell, born Rita Ramsey, would be accessible. It had taken only a phone call to Lon Cohen at the Gazette to learn that she had taken an apartment at the Churchill Towers two months ago, when she had left her husband’s roof.

In my pocket was a plain white envelope, sealed, on which I had written by hand:

Mrs. Morton Sorell

Personal and Confidential

and inside it was a card, also handwritten:

We were seen that evening in the lunchroom as we sat in the booth. It would be dangerous to phone you or for you to phone me. You can trust the bearer of this card.

No signature. It was twelve minutes to eleven when I handed the envelope to the chargé d’affaires at the lobby desk and asked him to send it up, and it still lacked three minutes of eleven when he motioned me to the elevator. Those nine minutes had been tough. If it hadn’t worked, if word had come down to bounce me, or no word at all, I had no other card ready to play. So as the elevator shot up I was on the rise in more ways than one, and when I stepped out at the thirtieth floor and saw that she herself was standing there in the doorway my face wanted to grin at her but I controlled it.