Rex Stout: Too Many Clients

“Okay. First I call to the cop out front to come in and stand by so you can’t warn anyone.” I turned. I had hit it. With the cops of course he had been set, but I had been unexpected and had caught him off balance. And he wasn’t a moron. He knew that even if I couldn’t prove it I must have enough to sick the law on him and the house.

As I turned he reached and got my sleeve. I turned back, and he stood there, his jaw working. I asked, not hostile, just wanting to know, “Did you kill him?”

“You’re a policeman,” he said.

“I am not. My name is Archie Goodwin and I work for a private detective named Nero Wolfe. We expect to get paid for investigating this case, that’s how we make a living. So I’ll be honest; we would rather find out for ourselves why Yeager came here instead of having the police do it, but if you won’t cooperate I’ll have to call that cop in. Did you kill him?”

He wheeled and started down the hall. I moved, got his shoulder, and yanked him around. “Did you kill him?”

“I’ve got a knife,” he said. “In this house I’ve got a right to have it.”

“Sure. I’ve got this.” I pulled the Marley from the holster. “And a permit for it. Did you kill him?”

“No. I want to see my wife. She thinks better than I do. My wife and daughter. I want—”

A door ten feet down the hall swung open, and a woman’s voice said, “We’re here, Cesar,” and there they were. The one coming was a tall grim-faced woman with an air of command. Maria stayed at the door. Perez started reeling off Spanish at his wife, but she broke in.

“Stop it! He’ll think it’s secrets. With an American talk American.” She focused sharp black eyes on me. “We heard you. I knew this would come, only I thought it would be the police. My husband is an honest man. He did not kill Mr. Yeager. We call him Mr. House because it’s his house. How do you know?”

I returned the Marley to the holster. “Since I do know, Mrs. Perez, does it matter how?”

“No, I am a fool to ask. All right, ask questions.”

“I’d rather have your husband answer them. It may take a while. If there’s a room with chairs?”

“I’ll answer them. We sit down with friends. You after my husband with a gun.”

“I was only showing off. Okay, if your legs can stand it mine can. What time did Mr. Yeager come here Sunday?”

“I thought you knew.”

“I do. I’m finding out how you answer questions. If you answer too many of them wrong I’ll try your husband, or the police will.”

She considered it a moment. “He came around seven o’clock.”

“Did he come to see you or your husband or your daughter?”

She glared. “No.”

“Whom did he come to see?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know.”

“Try again. That’s silly. I’m not going to spend all day prying it out of you bit by bit.”

She eyed me. “Have you ever been up there?”

“I’m asking the questions, Mrs. Perez. Whom did he come to see?”

“We don’t know.” She turned. “Go, Maria.”

“But Mother, it’s not—”

“Go!”

Maria went, back inside, and shut the door. It was just as well, since it’s a strain to keep your eyes where they ought to be when they want to be somewhere else. Mother returned to me.

“He came around seven o’clock and knocked on the door. That one.” She pointed to the door Maria had shut behind her. “He spoke to my husband and paid him some money. Then he went down the hall to the elevator. We don’t know if someone was up there or if someone came later. We were looking at the television, so we wouldn’t hear if someone came in and went to the elevator. Anyhow we weren’t supposed to know. The door in front has a good lock. So it’s not silly that we don’t know who he came to see.”

“Where’s the elevator?”

“In the back. It has a lock too.”

“You asked if I have ever been up there. Have you?”

“Of course. Every day. We keep it clean.”

“Then you have a key. We’ll go up now.” I moved.

She glanced at her husband, hesitated, glanced at me, went and opened the door Maria had closed and said something in Spanish, and started down the hall. Perez followed, and I brought up the rear. At the far end of the hall, clear back, she took a key from a pocket of her skirt and inserted it in the lock of a metal door, another Rabson lock. The door, either aluminum or stainless steel, slid open. That door certainly didn’t fit that hall, and neither did the inside of the elevator — more stainless steel, with red enameled panels on three sides. It was small, not even as large as Wolfe’s at home. It ascended, silent and smooth, I judged, right to the top floor, the door slid open, and we stepped out.

For the second time in an hour I must have either gaped or gasped when Perez turned on the lights. I have seen quite a few rooms where people had gone all out, but that topped them all. It may have been partly the contrast with the neighborhood, the outside of the house, and the down below, but it would have been remarkable no matter where. The first impression was of silk and skin. The silk, mostly red but some pale yellow, was on the walls and ceiling and couches. The skin was on the girls and women in the pictures, paintings, that took a good third of the wall space. In all directions was naked skin. The pale yellow carpet, wall to wall, was silk too, or looked it. The room was enormous, twenty-five feet wide and the full length of the house, with no windows at either end. Headed to the right wall, near the center, was a bed eight feet square with a pale yellow silk coverlet. Since yellow was Wolfe’s pet color it was too bad he hadn’t come along. I sniffed the air. It was fresh enough, but it smelled. Air-conditioned, with built-in perfume.

There weren’t many surfaces that would hold fingerprints — the tops of two tables, a TV console, a stand with a telephone. I turned to Mrs. Perez. “Have you cleaned here since Sunday night?”

“Yes, yesterday morning.”

That settled that. “Where’s the door to the stairs?”

“No stairs.”

“They’re boarded up below,” Perez said.

“The elevator’s the only way to come up?”

“Yes.”

“How long has it been like this?”

“Four years. Since he bought the house. We had been here two years.”

“How often did he come here?”

“We don’t know.”

“Certainly you do, if you came up every day to clean. How often?”

“Maybe once a week, maybe more.”

I turned on Perez. “Why did you kill him?”

“No.” He half closed an eye. “Me? No.”

“Who did?”

“We don’t know,” his wife said.

I ignored her. “Look,” I told him. “I don’t want to turn you over unless I have to. Mr. Wolfe and I would prefer to keep you to ourselves. But if you don’t open up we’ll have no choice, and there may not be much time. They’ve got a lot of fingerprints from the tarpaulin that covered his body. I know he was killed in this house. If just one of those prints matches yours, good-by. You’re in. Since he was killed in this house, you know something . What?”

He said to his wife, “Felita?”

She was looking at me, her sharp black eyes into me. “You’re a private detective,” she said. “You told my husband that’s how you make a living. So we pay you. We have some money, not much. One hundred dollars.”

“What do you pay me for?”

“To be our detective.”

“And detect what?”

“We’ll tell you. We have the money downstairs.”

“I’ll earn it first. All right, I’m your detective, but I can quit any time, for instance if I decide that you or your husband killed Yeager. What do you want me to detect?”