Рекс Стаут - The Silent Speaker

The doorman, whom I had by-passed, appeared and looked in at me. “I’ll phone up,” he said, “but it’s a waste of time. What’s your name and what paper are you from?”

Ordinarily I like to save butter, but under the circumstances, with no ceiling on expenses, I saw no reason why he shouldn’t be in the pay of the NIA too. So I left the elevator and walked down the hall with him, and when we got to the switchboard I spread out a ten-dollar bill thereon, saying:

“I’m not on a paper. I sell sea shells.”

He shook his head and started manipulations at the board. I put a hand on his arm and told him, “You didn’t let me finish. That was papa. Here’s mamma.” I deployed another ten. “But I warn you they have no children.”

He only shook his head again and flipped a lever. I was shocked speechless. I have had a lot to do with doormen, and I am certainly able to spot one too honest to accept twenty bucks for practically nothing, and that was not it. His principles didn’t even approach as high a standard as that, and he was being pure from some other motive. I emerged from the shock when I heard him telling the receiver:

“He says he sells sea shells.”

“The name,” I said, “is Archie Goodwin, and I was sent by Mr. Nero Wolfe.”

He repeated it to the receiver, and in a moment hung up and turned to me with a look of surprise. “She says go on up. Nine H.” He accompanied me toward the elevator. “About papa and mamma, I’ve changed my mind, in case you still feel—”

“I was kidding you,” I told him. “They really have got children. This is little Horace.” I handed him two bits and went in and commanded the pilot, “Nine H.”

It is not my custom to make personal remarks to young women during the first five minutes after meeting them, and if I violated it this time it was only because the remark popped out of me involuntarily. When I pushed the button and she opened the door and said good evening, and I agreed and removed my hat and stepped inside, the ceiling light right above her was shining on her hair, and what popped out was:

“Golden Bantam.”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I dye it with.”

I was already understanding, from the first ten seconds, what motive it was that the doorman was being pure from. Her pictures in the papers had been just nothing compared with this. After we had disposed of my hat and coat she preceded me into the room, and from the middle of it turned her head to say:

“You know Mr. Kates?”

I thought it had popped out of her as my remark had popped out of me, but then I saw him, rising to his feet from a chair in a corner where the light was dim.

“Hello,” I said.

“Good evening,” he piped.

“Sit down.” Phoebe Gunther straightened a corner of a rug with the toe of a little red slipper. “Mr. Kates came to tell me what happened at your party this evening. Will you have some Scotch? Rye? Bourbon? Gin? Cola?”

“No, thanks.” I was getting my internal skull fixtures jerked back into place.

“Well.” She sat on a couch against a nest of cushions. “Did you come to see what color my hair is or was there something else?”

“I’m sorry to bust in on you and Mr. Kates.”

“That’s all right. Isn’t it, Al?”

“It is not all right,” Alger Kates said, without hesitation, in his thin voice stretched tight but extremely distinct, “with me. It would be folly to trust him at all or to believe anything he says. As I told you, he is in the pay of the NIA.”

“So you did.” Miss Gunther was relaxing among the cushions. “But since we know enough not to trust him, all we have to do is to be a little smarter than he is in order to get more out of him than he gets out of us.” She looked at me, and seemed to be smiling, but I had already discovered that her face was so versatile, especially her mouth, that it would be better not to jump to conclusions. She told me, possibly smiling, “I have a theory about Mr. Kates. He talks the way people talked before he was born, therefore he must read old-fashioned novels. I wouldn’t suppose a research man would read novels at all. What would you suppose?”

“I don’t discuss people who don’t trust me,” I said politely. “And I don’t think you are.”

“Are what?”

“Smarter than me. I admit you’re prettier, but I doubt if you’re smarter. I was spelling champion of Zanesville, Ohio, at the age of twelve.”

“Spell snoop.”

“That’s just childish.” I glared at her. “I don’t imagine you’re hinting that catching people who commit crimes is work to be ashamed of, since you’re smart, so if what you have in mind is my coming here, why didn’t you tell the doorman—”

I stopped short because she was possibly laughing at me. I quit glaring, but went on looking at her, which was a bad policy because that was what was interfering with my mental processes.

“Okay,” I said curtly, “you got a poke in and made me blink. Round one for you. Round two. Your Mr. Kates may be as loyal as What’s-his-name, the boy that stood on the burning deck, but he’s a sap. Nero Wolfe is tricky, that I admit, but the idea that he would cover a murderer because he happened to belong to something out of the alphabet that signed checks is plain loony. Look at the record and show me where he ever accepted a substitute, no matter who said it was just as good. Here’s a free tip: if you think or know a BPR man did it, and don’t want him caught, bounce me out immediately and keep as far away from Wolfe as you can get. If you think an NIA man did it and you’d like to help, put on some shoes and get your hat and coat and come to his office with me. As far as I’m concerned you don’t need to bother about the hat.” I looked at Kates. “If you did it yourself, with some motive not to be mentioned for the sake of common decency, you’d better come along and confess and get it over with.”

“I told you!” Kates told her triumphantly. “See how he led up to that?”

“Don’t be silly.” Miss Gunther, annoyed, looked at him. “I’ll explain it to you. Finding that I am smarter than he is, he decided to pick on you, and he certainly got documentation for his statement that you’re a sap. In fact, you’d better be going. Leave him to me. I may see you at the office tomorrow.”

Kates shook his head bravely and firmly. “No!” He insisted. “He’ll go on that way! I’m not going to—”

He continued, but there’s no more use my putting it down than there was his saying it, for the hostess had got up, crossed to a table, and picked up his hat and coat. It seemed to me that in some respects she must have been unsatisfactory as a confidential secretary. A man’s secretary is always moving around, taking and bringing papers, ushering in callers and out again, sitting down and standing up, and if there is a constant temptation to watch how she moves it is hard to get any work done.

Kates lost the argument, of course. Within two minutes the door had closed behind him and Miss Gunther was back on the couch among the cushions. Meanwhile I had been doing my best to concentrate, so when she possibly smiled at me and told me to go ahead and teach her the multiplication table, I arose and asked if I might use her phone.

Her brows went up. “What am I supposed to do? Ask who you want to call?”

“No, just say yes.”

“Yes. It’s right over—”

“I see, thanks.”

It was on a little table against a wall, with a stool there, and I pulled out the stool and sat with my back to her and dialed. After only one buzz in my ear, because Wolfe hates to hear bells ring, I got a hello and spoke:

“Mr. Wolfe? Archie. I’m up here with Miss Gunther in her apartment, and I don’t believe it’s a good plan to bring her down there as you suggested. In the first place she’s extremely smart, but that’s not it. She’s the one I’ve been dreaming about the past ten years, remember what I’ve told you? I don’t mean she’s beautiful, that’s merely a matter of taste, I only mean she is exactly what I have had in mind. Therefore it will be much better to let me handle her. She began by making a monkey of me, but that was because I was suffering from shock. It may take a week or a month or even a year, because it is very difficult to keep your mind on your work under these circumstances, but you can count on me. You go on to bed and I’ll get in touch with you in the morning.”