Rex Stout: Bitter End

It sure was a ramshackle joint. From a dingy hall a dilapidated stair went up. I mounted to the floor above, heard noises, including machinery humming, off somewhere, and through a rickety door penetrated a partition and was in an anteroom. From behind a grilled window somebody’s grandpa peered out at me, and by shouting I managed to convey to him that I wanted to see Mr. Arthur Tingley. After a wait I was told that Mr. Tingley was busy, and would be indefinitely. On a leaf of my notebook I wrote, “Quinine urgent,” and sent it in. That did it. After another wait a cross-eyed young man came and guided me through a labyrinth of partitions and down a hall into a room.

Seated at an old, battered rolltop desk was a man talking into a phone, and in a chair facing him was a woman older than him with the physique and facial equipment of a top sergeant. Since the phone conversation was none of my business, I stood and listened to it, and gathered that someone named Philip had better put in an appearance by five o’clock or else. Meanwhile I surveyed the room, which had apparently been thrown in by the Indians when they sold the island. By the door, partly concealed by a screen, was an old, veteran marble-topped washstand. A massive, old-fashioned safe was against the wall across from Tingley’s desk. Wooden cupboards, and shelves loaded down with the accumulation of centuries, occupied most of the remaining wall space.

“Who the hell are you?”

I whirled and advanced. “A man by the name of Goodwin. Archie. The question is, do you want the Gazette to run a feature article about quinine in Tidbits, or do you want to discuss it first?”

His mouth fell open. “The Gazette ?”

“Right. Circulation over a million.”

“Good God!” he said in a hollow and helpless tone. The woman glared at me.

I was stirred by compassion. He may have merited his niece’s opinion of him, expressed and implied, but he was certainly a pathetic object at that moment.

I sat down. “Be of good cheer,” I said encouragingly. “The Gazette hasn’t got it yet. That’s merely one of the possibilities I offer in case you start shoving. I represent Nero Wolfe.”

“Nero Wolfe, the detective?”

“Yes. He started to eat—”

The woman snorted. “I’ve been expecting this. Didn’t I warn you, Arthur? Blackmail.” She squared her jaw at me. “Who are you working for? P. & B.? Consolidated Cereals?”

“Neither one. Are you Miss Yates?”

“I am. And you can take—”

“Pardon me.” I grinned at her. “Pleased to meet you. I’m working for Nero Wolfe. He took a mouthful of Liver Pâté Number Three, with painful consequences. He’s very fussy about his food. He wants to speak to the person who put in the quinine.”

“So do I,” Tingley said grimly.

“You don’t know. Do you?”

“No.”

“But you’d like to know?”

“You’re damn’ right I would.”

“Okay. I come bearing gifts. If you hired Wolfe for this job, granting he’d take it, it would cost you a fortune. But he’s vindictive. He wishes to do things to this quinine jobber. I was sent here to look around and ask questions.”

Tingley wearily shook his head. He looked at Miss Yates. She looked at him. “Do you believe him?” Tingley asked her.

“No,” she declared curtly. “Is it likely—?”

“Of course not,” I cut her off. “Nothing about Nero Wolfe is likely, which is why I tolerate him. It’s not likely, but that’s how it is. You folks are comical. You’re having the services of the best detective in the country offered to you gratis, and listen to you. I’m telling you, Wolfe’s going to get this quinine peddler. With your cooperation, fine. Without it, we’ll have to start by opening things up with a little publicity, which is why I mentioned the Gazette .”

Tingley groaned. Miss Yates’s shrewd eyes met mine. “What questions do you want to ask?”

“All I can think of. Preferably starting with you two.”

“I’m busy. I ought to be out in the factory right now. Did you say you had an appointment, Arthur?”

“Yes.” Tingley shoved back his chair and got up. “I have — I have to go somewhere.” He got his hat from a hook on the wall beside his desk, and his coat from another one. “I’ll be back by four-thirty.” He struggled into his coat and confronted me. His hat was on crooked. “If Miss Yates wants to talk to you, she can tell you as much as I could. I’m about half out of my senses. If this is an infernal trick of that P. & B. outfit—” He darted to his desk, turned a key in a bottom drawer, pocketed the key, and made for the door. On the threshold he turned: “You handle it, Gwen.”

So her name was Gwendolyn, or maybe Guinevere. It certainly must have been given to her when she was quite young — say sixty years ago. She was imperturbably and efficiently collecting an assortment of papers Tingley had left scattered on his desk and anchoring them under a cylindrical chunk of metal with a figure 2 on it, a weight from an old-fashioned balance scale. She straightened and met my gaze:

“I’ve been after him to get a detective, and he wouldn’t do it. This thing has got to be stopped. It’s awful. I’ve been here all my life — been in charge of the factory for twenty years — and now—” She squared her jaw. “Come along.”

I followed her. We left by another door than the one I had entered by, traversed a hall, passed through a door at the end, and there we were, in the Tidbits maternity ward. Two hundred women and girls, maybe more, in white smocks, were working at tables and benches and various kinds of vats and machines. Miss Yates led me down an aisle and she stopped beside a large vat. A woman about my age who had been peering into the vat turned to face us.

“This is Miss Murphy, my assistant,” Miss Yates said brusquely. “Carrie, this is Mr. Goodwin, a detective. Answer any questions he wants to ask, except about our formulas, and show him anything he wants to see.” She turned to me. “I’ll talk with you later, after I get some mixes through.”

I caught a flicker of something, hesitation or maybe apprehension, in Miss Murphy’s eyes, but it went as fast as it came, and she said quietly, “Very well, Miss Yates.”...

Wolfe was sticking to his accustomed daily schedule, in a sort of stubborn desperation in spite of the catastrophe of Fritz’s grippe. Mornings from 9 to 11 and afternoons from 4 to 6 he spent up in the plant rooms. When he came down at six that afternoon I was in the office waiting for him.

He stopped in the middle of the room, glanced around, frowned at me, and said, “Dr. Vollmer states that Fritz can get up in the morning. Not today. Not for dinner. Where is Mr. Tingley?”

“I don’t know.”

“I told you to bring him here.”

He was using his most provocative tone. I could have put quinine in his food. I said, “It’s a good thing Fritz will be up tomorrow. This couldn’t go on much longer. Tingley is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He went out soon after I got there. Miss Yates, whose name is Gwendolyn, the factory superintendent, and her assistant, Miss Carrie Murphy, showed me around. I have just finished typing a detailed report, but there’s nothing in it but facts. Tingley returned about four-thirty, but when I tried to see him he was having a talk with his son and I was thrown out on my ear. I’m going back in the morning if I’m still working for you. Those in favor of my resigning, raise their hand.” I stuck my hand up high.

“Pfui!” Wolfe said. “A man sells poisoned food—”

“Quinine is not poison.”

“A man sells poisoned food and you leave him sitting comfortably in conversation with his son. Now I’m going to the kitchen and try to prepare something to eat. If you care to join—”