Рекс Стаут - Death Times Three

“Very slim if any.” I stood with the milk. “Fritz was here all the time. Not unless they invented something new last week.”

“You did your errand?”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Sit down.” Fritz came with the beer, and Wolfe opened the bottle and poured. He likes plenty of foam. “I want a complete report from the beginning. From the time that woman appeared this morning.”

“Why? What’s the use? It’s my problem.”

“Not anymore. Now it’s mine. My house has been invaded, my privacy has been outraged, and my belongings have been pawed. Sit down.”

I moved to get one of the yellow chairs. He snapped, “Don’t be flippant! Sit at your desk!”

“It’s not mine,” I objected.

“Pfui. Confound it, sit down!”

I did so.

When Wolfe says he wants a complete report he means it — all the words, all the actions, and the music if any. At one time it had been a strain, but after all the years of practice I could rattle it off with no trouble at all. I left nothing out, not even the detail that Tammy Baxter didn’t arrange her legs like an actress when she sat. When I got to the end I said, “Before you start with questions I have one. I’m just curious. Why did you fire me? I have reported in full. What did I do or say that was out of line? Why fire me?”

“I didn’t.”

I stared. “What?”

“I merely said, ‘If you go, stay.’ That was ambiguous. You are never ambiguous when you quit, and neither am I when I discharge you. You were merely headstrong, as usual.” He wiggled a finger to flip it away. “That has no pertinence to the problem. I suppose you have made assumptions?”

“Plenty. That Hattie Annis found the counterfeit money in a room in her house and therefore knew who it belonged to. That the Secret Service knew or suspected that someone in that house was passing counterfeits, but they didn’t know who, and they were holding off because what they want is the guy that makes it. That the roomer knew or suspected that Hattie Annis had taken the money, and followed her here, and killed her. He might or might not have known that she didn’t have it, that she had given me the package: that doesn’t matter. With her dead it couldn’t be proved that he had had it.”

“Don’t expound. I’m awake. Just your assumptions.”

“This one has an alternative. Either that it couldn’t be Tammy Baxter, since Hattie Annis told her she was coming here, or that it is Tammy Baxter and she followed Hattie Annis here and then had the nerve to wait until I came back and feed me a line, to find out how much I had been told. The second has the edge. Since you’re awake you caught what she said: ‘She said she was going to take something — she was going to see Nero Wolfe about something.’ If she was straight, why the dodge?”

“Of course. What else?”

“That a T-man tailed Hattie Annis here and saw her hand me the package. That one limps, because why didn’t he stay on her, and if he stayed on her why didn’t he see the driver of the car that killed her? Also if both a T-man and the roomer tailed her here why didn’t they bump? I haven’t bought that one, but I have this: that the Secret Service has passed on something to the cops. I don’t know what or how much, but something. Purley Stebbins wouldn’t go up to Forty-seventh Street in a snowstorm to tackle that bunch about a hit-and-run unless he had reason to think one of them was involved. Excuse me for expounding.”

“Anything else?”

“That’ll do for now.”

“When it was your problem you were going to deal with it. How?”

“I was going to take a girl to the Flamingo and dance a couple of hours. I always find that stimulating. I hadn’t decided how. Now that it’s your problem I think you’ll find that you need to be stimulated too. There is absolutely no—”

The doorbell rang. I got up, went to the hall, took a look through the one-way glass panel, saw a familiar red round face and a pair of broad shoulders, and turned to tell Wolfe, “Inspector Cramer.”

Only then did I realize how hard the raid of the T-men had hit him, when he did something he had never done before. He arose and came to the hall and on to the front door, made sure the chain bolt was on, opened the door the two inches the chain would allow, and growled at the crack, “Yes?”

“Yes,” Cramer growled back. “Open up.”

“It’s bedtime. What do you want?”

“I want in!”

“Have you a warrant?”

“Nuts. I don’t need a warrant to ask you a few questions — and Goodwin.”

“At this hour of the night you do. We will be available at eleven in the morning if we are not engaged.”

“I had nothing to do with that warrant!”

What followed was as unprecedented as Wolfe’s answering the doorbell. I had seen and heard those two tangle many times, but it had never gone beyond words and looks and gestures. There and then it was brawn and bulk. Wolfe tried to shut the door and found it was obstructed. He flattened his palms on it and pushed. Nothing doing. I have never asked Cramer whether he had his shoulder or his foot against it, or his toe in the crack. If the latter, he must have regretted it. Wolfe turned and put his back against the frame, set his heels, and heaved, and the door slammed shut.

“Fine,” I said. “It’s a three-way jostle now — the Secret Service, the New York Police Department, and us. Fine.”

He went to the elevator, opened the door, and turned. “Turn off the doorbell and the telephone. Don’t leave the house in the morning. Tell Fritz.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you make a package like the one she gave you? In appearance?”

“Approximately. Near enough for the naked eye.”

“Do so in the morning. Goodnight.”

“What do I put in it?”

“Anything that will serve. Paper.”

“What do I do with it?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see in the morning. Bring it to my room at half past eight.”

He entered the elevator, which groaned as usual at the load, and pulled the door to. I went to the office to try the safe door, take a look at the files, and flip the switches, then to the kitchen to tell Fritz we were breaking off relations with the world, and then up to my room for some privacy.

Fritz takes Wolfe’s breakfast up to his room on a tray 17 × 26, and I eat mine in the kitchen. Tuesday morning, as I disposed of orange juice, griddle cakes, sausage, eggs poached with a purée of anchovy paste and sherry, and coffee, with the morning paper on the rack, the counterfeit package of counterfeits was at my elbow. Fritz being a paper and string hoarder had made it simple, and for the contents all I had needed was typewriter paper and the office paper cutter. It wasn’t identical, but it was close to it, and the ordinary white string was exactly the same.

I had had to hunt for Hattie Annis in the Times . They had given her a measly three inches on page 17, and there was no hint that it was anything but an everyday hit-and-run. It said that the driver had been so muffled up that no good description of him or her had been obtained.

At 8:28 I took the last swallow of coffee, picked up the package, arose, told Fritz the eggs had been even better than usual and went up to Wolfe’s room. He was at the table by a window, fully dressed, dipping honey from ajar onto a muffin. I displayed the package and he frowned at it.

“Nine thousand dollars?” he demanded.

“Right. The dimensions are perfect. I have a suggestion. Make another one and mail one to Leach and one to Cramer.”

“I have a better one.”

He described it. Whether it was better than mine would depend on how it worked out, but at least it was worth trying. He is as good at giving instructions as I am at reporting, and I rarely have to ask any questions, but that time there was one. If a situation developed where authority was needed, which should I call, Cramer or Leach? He wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t concede that any situation could be desperate enough to justify calling either of them, which left it up to me. I went down and got my coat and hat, stuck the package in my coat pocket, and left the house the back way. Either of the enemy forces might have a sentry out front, or even both, and I didn’t want to bother with shaking a tail. The snow had stopped during the night and the sun was edging over the top of the buildings across 34th Street. I flagged a taxi and told the driver 47th and Eighth Avenue.