Rex Stout: Counterfeit for Murder

A man’s voice answered. “Rector two, nine one hundred.”

Being discreet. Liking it plain, I asked, “Secret Service Division?”

“Yes.”

“I would like to speak to Mr. Albert Leach.”

“Mr. Leach isn’t in at the moment. Who is this, please?”

My reply was delayed because my attention was diverted. The front door had opened and a man had entered; and, hearing my voice, he had approached for a look. I looked back. He was young and handsome — Broadway handsome. The phone repeated, “Who is this, please?”

“My name is Archie Goodwin. I have a message for Mr. Leach. He asked me this morning about a woman named Tammy Baxter. Tell him that Miss Baxter is dead. Murdered. Her body was discovered in the parlor of the house where she lived on Forty-seventh Street. I have just notified the police. I thought Mr. Leach—”

I dropped the phone on the cradle, moved, and called, “Hey you! Hold it!”

The handsome young man, halfway to the parlor door, stopped and wheeled; and at the rear of the hall there were steps and Martha Kirk’s voice, and she came trotting, the trot of a dancer, with Raymond Dell striding at her heels. As I crossed the hall a buzzer sounded in the kitchen, and I went and opened the door. It was two harness bulls. They stepped in and the one in front spoke. “Are you Archie Goodwin?”

“I am.” I pointed to the parlor door. “In there.”

Two hours later, at twenty minutes to four, as I sat at the big table in the kitchen eating crackers and cheese and raspberry preserves, and drinking coffee, Inspector Cramer of Homicide West sent for me to ask me a favor. Very few people or situations had ever got Cramer to the point of asking a favor of me, but Hattie Annis had managed it.

With me at the table were two of the roomers, Noel Ferris and Paul Hannah. Ferris was the handsome young man who had appeared as I was phoning. Hannah was even younger, but not as handsome. He had chubby pink cheeks and not enough nose, and his ears stuck out. A dick had gone for him at the Mushroom Theater, where he had been rehearsing. At the moment Cramer sent for me he and Ferris were discussing the question, when had they last been in the parlor? Ferris said one evening about a month ago, when he had gone in to see if the piano was as bad as Martha said it was, and had found it was worse. Hannah said two weeks ago yesterday, when he had come downstairs to make a phone call and Martha was at the phone talking, and he had stepped into the parlor because he didn’t want to stand there and listen. Before they had got onto that they had argued about the knife. Hannah said he had identified it as one from a kitchen drawer which he had often used, and Ferris said he shouldn’t have identified it; he should have merely said it was similar. They had got fairly heated, paying no attention to a city employee who was on a chair by the door, taking it in.

I hadn’t been allowed in the parlor, but I had seen the experts come and go, and some of them were still there. My first interview had been with Purley Stebbins, who had arrived in person only ten minutes behind the pair from the prowl car. That had taken place in the kitchen. My second interview had been in the room above the kitchen, Raymond Dell’s room as I learned later, with Inspector Cramer and the T-man, Albert Leach. That was an honor, but I felt that I rated it because if it hadn’t been for me they wouldn’t have been there. My phone call to the Secret Service had brought Leach on the jump, and Leach’s appearance had brought the Inspector. No doubt about it. So it was Cramer, not Stebbins, that I got to see reacting to outside authority, and it wasn’t very instructive because he was mostly reacting to me as usual.

“You say Wolfe told her he would expect no fee and he wasn’t interested in a reward, but he sent you here with her and you paid the cab fare. Nuts. I know Wolfe and I know you. You expect me to swallow that?”

Or: “You try to tell me that you don’t know exactly how long it was after you found the body until you called Stebbins because you didn’t look at your watch when you found the body. That’s a lie. The way you’ve been trained looking at your watch would have been automatic. Raymond Dell and Martha Kirk say it was just a few minutes after one when you and Hattie Annis left the kitchen. You called Stebbins at one-thirty-four. Half an hour. What were you doing?”

Or: “Quit your clowning!”

Of course he was at a disadvantage, since at the beginning he expected to be riled because he knew I knew how, and when he’s riled his mind skips. So I got no bruises, and the one ticklish point was never mentioned. I gave him all the facts about the package from the time Hattie left it with me until I put it in the safe, excepting one detail, and he didn’t even hint at the possibility that it might be queer, and neither did Leach. Leach horned in only once, when he got riled too.

“I warned you,” he said, “not to try any fancy tricks with the Secret Service. And at that moment, when I was asking you if Hattie Annis had been there, she was in with Wolfe. You have just admitted it. You withheld information required by an agent of the Federal government in the performance of his duty, and you will answer for it.”

“I’ll answer now,” I told him. “Why should I tell you anything about anybody? If you had any proper ground for asking me about Hattie Annis you didn’t mention it. Inspector Cramer doesn’t have to mention it. She and I found a dead body in her house, and it’s his job to catch murderers, and it’s possible that there is a connection between the murder and the package that Miss Annis found and brought to Mr. Wolfe. So I answer his questions. I can’t think offhand of any question whatever that I owe you an answer to. Do you want to try?”

That was deliberate. Sooner or later someone was going to ask me if I knew that money was counterfeit, and I might as well get it over with and have it on the record. But he merely looked at Cramer, and Cramer resumed.

At twenty minutes to four, when a dick named Callahan entered the kitchen and said the Inspector wanted me, I supposed it had been decided that it was time to try me on the ten-thousand-dollar question, but when I saw Cramer’s face I knew that wasn’t it. Instead of being set to blurt a tough one at me, he was chewing on a cigar, and he does that only when he doesn’t like the prospect. Lieutenant Rowcliff and another dick were with him, in Dell’s room. Leach wasn’t there. It didn’t come easy for him. He took the cigar from his mouth, put it back, and rasped, “We need your help, Goodwin.”

“I’d love to help,” I said.

“Yeah.” Not at all the right tone for asking a favor. “Did you tell that Annis woman to bolt herself in?”

“No. I have reported it as it happened.”

“Yeah.” He removed the cigar. “She won’t open the door. She won’t open her trap. We don’t want to smash the door unless we have to. She’s your client and if you tell her to slide that damn bolt she will.”

“She is not my client. Nor Mr. Wolfe’s.”

“So you say. Wouldn’t she open the door if you asked her to?”

“Probably.”

“Okay. Ask her.”

I allowed a grin to show. “Not the way you mean. Not with you at my elbow. I’m willing to try if I’m alone in the hall and the door of this room is shut, and I’ll explain the situation to her. She has a personal attitude to cops. A cop shot her father.”

“Yeah, fifteen years ago. Hasn’t she got any sense?”

“No.”

“She might know we’ll bust the door if we have to. Will you tell her that?”

“Sure. With conditions as specified. You and yours stay here with the door shut. Rowcliff is slow in the skull but his feet are fast.”