Rex Stout: Too Many Clients

“And, calling himself Yeager, he said that he expected to be followed to a specified address on West Eighty-second Street, and Yeager’s body was found near that address. How long had he been dead?”

“I don’t know. Give them time. Besides what I’ve told you, all Lon knew was that the body was in a hole in the street dug by Con Edison men, it was covered with a tarp, and it was found by boys whose ball rolled in.”

“If I approve of your proposal to explore the possibility of getting a client and earning a fee, how do you intend to proceed?”

I swallowed soup. “First I finish these sandwiches and the apple and milk. Then I go to Eighty-second Street. Since the body was found in a hole in the street, it’s quite possible that there is nothing to connect it with that neighborhood or that particular address. He could have been killed anywhere and taken there and dumped. The blocks in the Eighties between Columbus and Amsterdam are no place for a big shot in a big corporation. The Puerto Ricans and Cubans average three or four to a room. I want to find out what business Yeager had there, if any.”

“You would go now? Tonight?”

“Sure. As soon as I empty this tray.”

“Pfui. How often have I told you that impetuosity is a virtue only when delay is dangerous?”

“Oh, six thousand.”

“But you are still headlong. In the morning we shall get many details that are lacking now. There may be no problem left, except the identity of the man who came here in masquerade, and that may no longer be of interest. Now, of course, it is. How long was he with you?”

“Twenty-five minutes.”

“We may need a record of what he said. Instead of dashing up to Eighty-second Street you will spend the evening at the typewriter. The conversation verbatim, and include a complete description.” He picked up the book and shifted to his reading position.

That took care of the rest of the evening. I still would have liked to take a look at 156 West 82nd Street before the cops got interested in it, if they hadn’t already, but Wolfe did have a point, and it was his money I had given Mike Collins. Typing my talk with the bogus Yeager was no strain, merely work. I have reported orally many conversations much longer than that one, with more people involved. It was a little short of midnight when I finished. After collating the sheets, original and carbon, and putting them in a drawer, removing the orchids from the vase on Wolfe’s desk and taking them to the garbage pail in the kitchen — he wants them gone when he brings fresh ones in the morning — locking the safe, seeing that the front door was bolted, and turning out the lights, I mounted two flights to my room. Wolfe was already in his, on the second floor.

Usually I get down to the kitchen for breakfast around eight-thirty, but that Tuesday morning I made it earlier, a little after eight. I wanted to go straight to the little table where Fritz had put my copy of the Times on the reading rack, but impetuosity is a virtue only when delay is dangerous, so I made myself exchange greetings with Fritz, get my glass of orange juice, stir it, and take a couple of sips. Then I went and got the paper. Would the headline be YEAGER MURDER SOLVED?

It wasn’t. It was EXECUTIVE SHOT AND KILLED. I sat down and took another sip.

With my orange juice, buckwheat cakes and sausage, blackberry jam, and two cups of coffee, I read it in both the Times and the Gazette . I’ll skip such details as the names of the boys who found the body. They got their names in the papers, and that ought to last them, and anyway I doubt if they read books. He had been shot once, above the right ear, at close range, and had died instantly. He had been dead sixteen to twenty-four hours when the body was examined at 7:30 p.m., so he had been killed between 7:30 p.m. Sunday and 3:30 a.m. Monday. The autopsy might make it more definite. There had been no workmen in the excavation on 82nd Street all day Monday because needed repair times were not at hand, so the body could have been put in the hole Sunday night. The tarpaulin had been left in the hole by the workmen. No one had been found who had seen Yeager alive in the neighborhood or who had heard a shot fired in the vicinity, so he had probably been killed elsewhere and the body transferred there.

Yeager’s daughter, Anne, was at college, Bennington. His son, Thomas G. Junior, was in Cleveland, employed at the plant of Continental Plastic Products. Yeager and his wife had left New York Friday evening to spend the weekend visiting friends in the country; he had returned to town Sunday afternoon, but his wife hadn’t returned until Monday morning. There had been no one at the Yeager house on 68th Street Sunday afternoon. Nothing was known of Yeager’s movements after he boarded a train for New York at Stamford at 5:02 p.m. Sunday.

No one was being held by the police, and the District Attorney would say only that the investigation was in progress.

In the picture of him in the Times he was grinning like a politician. There were two in the Gazette — one a reproduction of one I had seen in Lon’s office, and one of him stretched out at the edge of the hole he had been found in. I clipped the one in the Times and the live one from the Gazette and put them in my pocket notebook.

At 8:51 I put down my empty coffee cup, thanked Fritz for the meal and told him I might or might not be home for lunch, went to the hall, mounted the flight to Wolfe’s room, and entered. His breakfast tray, with nothing left on it but empty dishes, was on the table by a window, and beside it was his copy of the Times . He was standing before the mirror on the dresser, knotting his four-in-hand. Since he always goes from his room to the roof for his morning two hours in the plant rooms I don’t know why he sports a tie — maybe being polite to the orchids. He grunted good morning, got the tie adjusted, and turned.

“I’m off,” I said. “Instructions?”

“ Your initiative,” he said.

“No, sir. That was yesterday. Are you sending me or aren’t you? Apparently it’s wide open, unless they’re saving something. He had been dead at least fourteen hours when that bozo came yesterday. What he said is in my desk drawer. How much do I have along for possible needs?”

“Enough.”

“Any limit?”

“Certainly. The limit dictated by your discretion and sagacity.”

“Right. Expect me when you see me.”

Descending to the office, I opened the safe, got five hundred dollars in used fives, tens, and twenties from the cash reserve, closed the safe, and twirled the knob. Removing my jacket, I unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk, got my armpit holster and put it on, loaded the Marley .32, and slipped it in the holster. Ever since an unpleasant experience some years ago I never go on an errand connected with a murder with only my pocketknife. I put on my jacket and went to the hall. Coat and hat? I hate to bother with them. There was no sun outside; the 7:30 radio had said possible showers. What the hell, live dangerously. I left, walked to Tenth Avenue and flagged a taxi, and told the driver 82nd and Broadway.

Of course I had no script; it would have to be ad lib, except the obvious first step, to find out if the city scientists had finished their research. Many of them knew me by sight, and they knew I wouldn’t be nosing around the scene of a murder just to pass the time. So, walking east from Broadway and crossing Amsterdam Avenue, I stopped at the corner for a survey from a distance, from the uptown side of 82nd Street. I have good eyes at any distance, and I could make out the “156” on a house about thirty paces from the corner. Parked cars were bumper to bumper along the curb on both sides except where barriers guarded the hole in the pavement, but there was no police car, marked or unmarked.