Rex Stout - Bitter End

“Have Mr. Guthrie Judd here at eleven.”

Before leaving the office I typed what seemed to me to be a nifty visiting card:

Mr. Judd: I respectfully submit the following schedule of events last evening at the Tingley Building:

7:05: Amy Duncan arrives; is knocked on head.

7:30: Guthrie Judd arrives.

7:35: Guthrie Judd leaves.

8:08: I arrive, find Tingley dead.

May I discuss it with you?

I phoned his office in the financial district a little after nine, but was unable to extract any information from anyone even about the weather, which was fine, so I got out the roadster and drove down there.

After a supercilious receptionist condescended to phone someone, and a sap with slick hair made sure I wasn’t Jesse James, I got the envelope dispatched. Then I waited, until finally a retired prize fighter appeared and conducted me through doors and down corridors, and ushered me into a room about the size of a tennis court; and he stayed right at my elbow for the trip across a couple of acres of rugs to where a man sat at an enormous flat-topped desk with nothing on it but a newspaper. On the man’s face was the same totalitarian expression that had goaded me into chalking an X on the door of his car the day before. The corner of the card I had typed was held between the tips of a finger and thumb to avoid germs.

“This impertinence,” he said, in a tone he must have been practicing from boyhood, in case he had ever been a boy. “I wanted to look at you. Take him out, Aiken.”

I grinned at him. “I forgot to bring my chalk. But you’re already down. You’ll discuss it either with me or the police—”

“Bah. The police have already informed me of Mr. Cliff’s false and ridiculous statement. Also, they have just told me on the phone who you are. If you annoy me further I’ll have you jailed. Take him out, Aiken.”

The ex-pug actually put his hand on my arm. It was all I could do to keep from measuring one of the rugs with him. But I merely set my jaw and walked back across the carpet department to the door. He accompanied me all the way to the elevators. As the elevator door opened I said in a kindly tone, “Here, boy,” and flipped a nickel at his face. It got him on the tip of the nose, but luckily his reflex was too slow for him to thank me properly before the door closed.

For the second time in twenty-four hours I had failed to fill an order, and as I went back to where I had parked the roadster and started uptown I was in no mood to keep to the right and stop for lights. It was more than likely that Judd would get away with it. If a man in his position maintained that Cliff had either misread the license number of the car or was lying, there wasn’t much the cops could or would do about it. They might have a try at the chauffeur, but of course Judd would have attended to that.

It was with the idea in mind of a substitute for Judd that I turned west on 26th Street and drove to the Tingley Building. Not something just as good, but anyhow something. But that was a dud, too. The place was silent and deserted, which I suppose was natural in view of what had happened.

I thought I might as well proceed with my search for a substitute, and, after consulting my memo book, drove to 23rd Street and turned east and stopped in front of an old brownstone. The vestibule was clean, with the brass fronts of the mailboxes polished and shining, including the one which bore the name of Yates, where I pressed the button. I entered on the click, mounted one flight, and had my finger on a button at a door in the rear when the door was opened by Gwendolyn herself.

“Oh,” she said. “You.”

Her face was moderately haggard, and her lids were so swollen that her eyes didn’t seem anything like as keen and shrewd as they had the day before.

I asked if I could come in, and she made room for me and then led the way into a large living-room. Sitting there was Carrie Murphy. She looked as if she had been either crying or fighting; with an Irish girl you can’t tell.

“You folks look kind of all in,” I said sympathetically.

Miss Yates grunted. “We didn’t get much sleep. They kept us up most of the night, and who could sleep, anyway?” She gazed at me curiously. “It was you that found him.”

“It was,” I agreed.

“What did you go there for?”

“Just to invite him to call on Nero Wolfe to discuss quinine.”

“Oh. I was going to phone you. I want to see Amy Duncan. Do you know where she is?”

That made her a pushover. “Well,” I said, “she spent the night up at our place under the care of a doctor. I left early this morning, so I can’t guarantee that she’s still there, but I suppose she is.”

“The paper says,” Carrie Murphy put in, “that she’s going to be detained for questioning. Does that mean that she’s suspected of killing her uncle?”

“Certainly.”

“Then—”

“We want to see her,” Miss Yates interposed.

“Okay, come along. I’ve got a car.”

It still lacked a couple of minutes till eleven when we got there, so Wolfe hadn’t come down from the plant rooms, and the office was empty. I got the visitors arranged in chairs and then beat it to the roof. Wolfe was at the sink in the potting room washing his hands.

“The baboon named Judd,” I reported, “is going to have me jailed for annoying him. Probably you, too. He’s the kind you read about, made of silk reinforced with steel, very tough. He has informed the police that Cliff is a liar. I went to Tingley’s and found no one there. I found Miss Yates at her apartment, and Carrie Murphy there making a call, and they said they wanted to see Amy Duncan, so I told them she was here and brought them along.”

I made myself scarce before he could make what he would have regarded as a fitting comment on my failure to get Judd. On my way down I stopped at my room to powder my nose, and heard the elevator start its descent, so I hurried along.

He acted fairly human when I introduced the two callers. After ringing for beer and heaving a sigh of pleasure when Fritz brought it in, he leaned back and slanted his eyes at Gwendolyn.

“Mr. Goodwin tells me you wish to see Miss Duncan. She’s not here. The police came with a warrant and took her.”

“A warrant?” Carrie Murphy demanded. “Do you mean she’s arrested?”

“Yes. As a material witness. They took her from my house. I don’t like people being taken from my house with warrants. Her bond is being arranged for. Are you ladies friends of hers?”

“We know her,” said Miss Yates. “We’re not enemies. We don’t want to see her unjustly accused.”

“Neither do I. I think it very unlikely that she had anything to do with that quinine. What do you think?”

“The same as you do. Will they let us see her?”

“I doubt it.”

“You see,” Carrie blurted, “there’s something we didn’t tell the police! We didn’t want them to know about the quinine!”

Wolfe shrugged. “That’s absurd. They already know. Not only from Mr. Goodwin, from Mr. Cliff, too. What was it that you didn’t tell them?”

“We didn’t—” Carrie checked herself and looked at her boss. Miss Yates compressed her lips and said nothing. Carrie transferred back to Wolfe. “We don’t know,” she said, “whether it’s important or not. From what it says in the paper we can’t tell. That’s what we want to ask Amy. Can we ask you?”

“Try.”

“Well — Amy was there, wasn’t she?”

“At the Tingley Building last evening? Yes.”

“What time did she get there?”

“Five minutes past seven.”

“And what happened?”

“As she entered the office someone who was hiding behind the screen hit her on the head with an iron weight and knocked her unconscious. She remained unconscious for an hour. When Mr. Goodwin arrived, at eight minutes past eight, she was trying to descend the stairs, but collapsed again. He brought her here, after investigating upstairs and finding Tingley’s body. She says that when she entered the office her uncle was not in sight, so it is supposed that he was already dead.”