Rex Stout: Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue

He shook his head. “I didn’t get any message. If you sent it to the hotel, I haven’t been there since morning. What did it say?”

“Just that I wanted to see you.”

“I didn’t get it.” He lifted a hand to massage the side of his neck. “I came because I wanted to see you. ” He emphasized a word by stretching it. “I wanted to see that Paul Fyfe too, but I didn’t know he was here, that was just luck. I wanted to see him about a trick he tried to work on a friend of mine. You know about the hot-water bags.”

Wolfe nodded. “And me?”

“I wanted to see you because I understand you’re fixing it up that I killed my partner, Bert Fyfe.” The brown eyes had narrowed a little. Evidently they squinted at other things besides uranium. “I wanted to ask if you needed any help.”

Wolfe grunted. “Your information is faulty, Mr. Arrow. I have been hired to investigate and decide whether any of the circumstances of Mr. Fyfe’s death warrant a police inquiry, and for that I do need help. There is no question of ‘fixing it up,’ as you put it. Of course your offer of help was ironic, but I do need it. Shall we proceed?”

Arrow laughed. No guffaws; just an easy little chuckle that went with the drawl. “That depends on how,” he said. “Proceed how?”

“With an exchange of information. I need some, and you may want some. First, I assume that you got what you already have from Miss Goren. If I’m wrong, correct me. You must have talked with her since four o’clock this afternoon. No doubt she thought she was reporting events accurately, but if she gave you the impression that I’m after you with malign intent she was wrong. Do you care to tell me whether the information that brought you here came from Miss Goren?”

“Certainly it did. She had dinner with me. Doctor Buhl came to the restaurant for her to bring her here.”

If I’m giving the impression that he was eager to co-operate with Wolfe I am wrong. He was merely bragging. He was jumping at the chance to tell somebody, anybody, that Miss Goren had let him buy her a dinner.

“Then,” Wolfe said, “you should realize that her report was ex parte, though I don’t say she deliberately colored it. I will say this, and will have it typed and sign it if you wish, that so far I have found no shred of evidence to inculpate you with regard to Bertram Fyfe’s death. Let’s get on to facts. What do you know about the hot-water bags? Not what any one has told you, not even Miss Goren, but what do you know from your own observation?”

“Nothing whatever. I never saw them.”

“Or touched them?”

“Of course not. Why would I touch them?” The drawl never accelerated. “And if you’re asking because that Paul Fyfe says he found them empty, what has that got to do with facts?”

“Possibly nothing. I’m not a gull. When did you last see Bertram Fyfe alive?”

“Saturday evening, just before we left to go to the theater. I went in just for a minute.”

“Miss Goren was there with him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You didn’t go in to see him when you returned from the theater?”

“No. Do you want to know why?”

“I already know. You found what Mr. David Fyfe calls a situation, and you went out again, abruptly. I have inferred that you went to look for Paul Fyfe. Is that correct?”

“Sure, and I found him. After what Miss Goren told us I would have spent the night finding him, but I didn’t have to. I found him down in the bar.”

“And assaulted him.”

“Sure I did. I wasn’t looking for him to shine his shoes.” The easy little chuckle rippled out, pleasant and peaceful. “I guess I ought to be glad a cop stepped in because I was pretty mad.” He looked at me with friendly interest. “That was quite a squeeze you gave me.”

“What then?” Wolfe asked. “I understand you didn’t return to the apartment.”

“I sure didn’t. Another cop came, but I was still mad and I didn’t want to be held, so they got mad. They put handcuffs on me and one of them took me to a station house and locked me up. I wouldn’t tell them who it was I had hit or why I hit him, and I guess they were trying to find him to make a charge. Finally they let me use a phone, and I got someone to send a lawyer and he talked me out. I went to the apartment and found that Paul Fyfe there, and that Tuttle and his wife, and Bert was dead. That doctor was there too.”

“Of course it was a shock to find him dead.”

“Yes, it was. It wouldn’t have been if I had killed him, is that it?” Johnny Arrow chuckled. “If you’re really straight on this, if you’re not trying to fix me up, let me tell you something, mister. Bert and I had been knocking around together for five years, some pretty rough going. We never starved to death, but we came close to it. Nobody ever combed our hair for us. When we found Black Elbow it took a lot of hard fast work to sew up the claims, and neither of us could have swung it alone. That was when we had a lawyer put our agreement in writing, so if something happened to one of us there wouldn’t be some outsiders mixing in and making trouble. It had got so we liked to be together, even when we rubbed. That was why I came to New York with him when he asked me to. There was nothing in New York I wanted. We could handle all our business matters in Black Elbow and Montreal. I sure didn’t come here with him to kill him.”

Wolfe was regarding him steadily. “Then he didn’t come to New York on business?”

“No, sir. He said it was a personal matter. After we got here he got in touch with his sister and brothers, and I had the idea something was eating him from away back. He went to Mount Kisco a few times and took me along. We rode all around the place in a Cadillac. We went to the house where he was born, and went all through it — there’s an Italian family living there now. We went and had ice cream sodas at Tuttle’s drugstore. We went to see a woman that ran a rooming house he had lived in once, but she had gone years ago. Just last week he found out she was living in Poughkeepsie, and we drove up there.”

It took him quite a while to get that much out because he never speeded up. There was the advantage that he didn’t have to stop for breath. “I seem to be talking a lot,” he said, “but I’m talking about Bert. For five years I didn’t do much talking except to him, and now I guess I want to talk about him.”

He cocked his head to consider a moment, and then went on. “I wouldn’t want to be fixed up, and I wouldn’t want to fix anyone else up, but I guess that was too vague what I said about something eating Bert from away back. He told me a little about it when we were sitting under a rock one day up in Canada. He said if we really hit it he might go back home and attend to some unfinished business. Do you know how his father died and how he was tried for murder?”

Wolfe said he did.

“Well, he told me about it. He said he had never claimed his share of the inheritance because he didn’t want any part of the mess he had run away from, and if you knew Bert that wouldn’t surprise you. He said he had always kidded himself that he had rubbed it out and forgotten it, but now that it looked as if we might hit big he was thinking he might go back and look around. And that’s what he did. If he had anyone in particular in mind he never told me, but I noticed a few things. When he told his family what he was doing he watched their faces. When he told them he was getting a complete transcript of the testimony at his trial for murder they didn’t like it. When he told them he had been to see the woman that ran the rooming house they didn’t like that either. It looked to me as if he was trying to give them an itch to scratch.”