Rex Stout - Too Many Clients

“Not here,” I told her. “If you’re leaving alone, there’s a booth at the corner. If you’re going with me, there’s a phone in Mr. Wolfe’s office.”

She looked more mad than scared, but that’s always a guess with a strange face. “Do you know whose room this is?” she demanded.

“I know whose it was. Thomas G. Yeager’s.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Skip it. I not only won’t ask questions, I won’t answer them.”

“You have no right...” She let that go. “I am Mr. Yeager’s secretary. I was. I came to get a notebook I left here, that’s all.”

“Then you have nothing to fear. If and when the police get to you, just tell them that and they’ll apologize for bothering you.”

“If I don’t go with you, you’re going to tell the police?”

“I haven’t said so. Mr. Wolfe makes the decisions. I’m just the errand boy.”

She moved. I thought she was bound for the phone, but she kept straight on, to the far end, to the door to the bathroom, and on through. I went and took a look at Fred’s cheek. He had his belt back on. “So this was Yeager’s room,” he said. “Now since I know that—”

“You don’t. You don’t know anything. I lied to her and she fell for it. Your job is merely to be here to welcome callers. There’s no harm done. Your cheek looks worse than it is, and there’s stuff in the bathroom for it. You would have had to take the coverlet off anyway when you go to bed. I’ll help you fold it.”

I took one end and he took the other. He asked how long he would have to hang on there, and I said until further notice, and what better could he ask? Any man with a feeling for the finer things of life would consider it a privilege to be allowed to shack up in such an art gallery as that, and he was getting paid for it, twenty-four hours a day. He said even the TV had caught it; when he turned it on what he had got was a woman in a bathtub blowing soap bubbles.

As he put the folded coverlet on a couch Julia McGee reappeared. She had adjusted the neck of her dress, put her hair in order, and repaired her face. She wasn’t at all bad-looking. She came up to me and said, “All right, I’m accepting your invitation.”

When you enter the hall of the old brownstone on West 35th Street, the first door on your left is to what we call the front room, and the one beyond it is to the office. Both of those rooms are soundproofed, not as perfectly as Yeager’s bower of carnality, but well enough, including the doors. I took Julia McGee to the front room, had my offer to take her coat declined, and went through the connecting door to the office, closing it behind me. Wolfe was in his favorite chair with his book. He is not a fast reader, and that book has 667 pages, with about 600 words to the page. When I crossed to his desk and told him I had brought company he finished a paragraph, closed the book on a finger, and scowled at me.

I went on. “Her name is Julia McGee. She says she was Yeager’s secretary, which is probably true because it can be easily checked. She says she went there tonight to get a notebook she had left there, which is a lie and not a very good one. There is no notebook in that room. When she entered and saw Fred she went for him and drew blood on his face, and he had to wrap her up in a bed cover so he could use the phone. After I got her name and address from things in her bag I told her she could either go now and explain to the police later or she could come here with me, and she came with me. I made a concession, I told her she could use the phone as soon as she got here, with us present.”

He said, “Grrrrh.” I gave him two seconds to add to it, but apparently that was all, so I went and opened the door to the front room and told her to come in. She came on by me, stopped to glance around, saw the phone on my desk, crossed to it, sat in my chair, and dialed. Wolfe inserted his bookmark, put the book down, leaned back, and glared at her.

She told the receiver, “I want to speak to Mr. Aiken. This is Julia McGee... That’s right... Thank you.” A one-minute wait. “Mr. Aiken?... Yes... Yes, I know, but I had to tell you, there was a man there and he attacked me and... No, let me tell you, another man came and said they were working for Nero Wolfe, the detective... Yes, Nero Wolfe. The second one, Archie Goodwin, said Nero Wolfe wanted to talk with anyone who came to that room and wanted me to go with him, and that’s where I am now, in Nero Wolfe’s office... Yes... No, I don’t think so, they’re both right here, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin... I don’t know... Yes, of course, but I don’t know... Wait, I’ll ask.”

She turned to me. “What’s this address?” I told her, and she went back to the phone. “Six-eighteen West Thirty-fifth Street... That’s right... Yes, I will.” She hung up, swiveled, told Wolfe, “Mr. Aiken will be here in twenty minutes,” and wriggled her coat off.

Wolfe asked, “Who is Mr. Aiken?”

Her look was what you would get from the Yankee batboy if you asked him who is Mr. Stengel. “Mr. Benedict Aiken. The president of Continental Plastic Products.”

That changed my mind. Wanting my own chair, I had been about to move her to the red leather one, but she would only have to move again when the president came, so I brought one of the yellow ones for her, facing Wolfe’s desk, and put her coat on the couch. As she changed to it Wolfe lifted his head to sniff. His opinion of perfume may be only a part of his opinion of women. He always thinks he smells it when there’s a woman in the room. I had been closer to Julia McGee than he had, and she wasn’t scented.

He eyed her. “You told Mr. Goodwin that you went to that room this evening to get a notebook you had left there. When did you leave it?”

She was meeting his eyes. “I’ll wait until Mr. Aiken gets here.”

Wolfe shook his head. “That won’t do. I can’t prevent his coming, but he’ll enter only if it suits me. I want some facts before he arrives. When did you leave the notebook?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. In a moment she spoke. “I didn’t. That was a — that wasn’t true. I went there this evening because Mr. Aiken asked me to.”

“Indeed. To get something he had left?”

“No. I’d rather wait until he’s here, but it doesn’t matter. You know that place was Mr. Yeager’s, so it doesn’t matter. Mr. Aiken sent me there to see if there was anything there that would connect Mr. Yeager with it, that would show it was his place.”

“Mr. Aiken gave you keys?”

“No, I had keys. I had been there a few times to take dictation from Mr. Yeager. I was his secretary.”

Wolfe grunted. “I haven’t seen that room, but Mr. Goodwin has described it. Did you think it a suitable milieu for business dictation?”

“It wasn’t my place to think it was suitable or wasn’t. If he thought it was — he was my boss.”

Wolfe looked at me. I raised my brows. One brow up meant no, even money. Two brows up meant no, five to one. He returned to her.

“If you had found something that showed it was Mr. Yeager’s place, what were you going to do with it?”

“I was going to take it. Take it away.”

“As instructed by Mr. Aiken?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Aiken can tell you that better than I can.”

“You must have a notion. You didn’t think that he was merely indulging a whim.”

“Of course not. The obvious reason was that he wanted to protect the reputation of Continental Plastic Products. It was bad enough, the executive vice-president being murdered. Mr. Aiken didn’t want it to be known that he had been — that he had had a — a place like that.”