Rex Stout - Before Midnight

I was in the middle of the Frazee notes when the phone interrupted me, and when I told it, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking,” a male voice said, “I want to speak to Mr. Wolfe. This is Patrick O’Garro.”

They were certainly popping the precedents. He should have told his secretary, and she should have got me and spent five minutes trying to lobby me into putting Wolfe on. The best explanation was that they were playing it so close to their chins they were even keeping it from the staff that they had hired Nero Wolfe.

“He’s engaged,” I said, “and if I disengage him for a phone call it would have to be good. Can’t you use me for a relay?”

“I want to ask him if he’s made any progress.”

“If he has it’s in his head. He told you he would report later this evening. He has seen Miss Frazee and Mrs. Wheelock. How about the others?”

“That’s why I’m calling. Susan Tescher will be there at six, and Harold Rollins at seven, but Younger can’t come. He’s in bed at the hotel with heart flutters. They sent him up from the District Attorney’s office in an ambulance. He wouldn’t go to a hospital. My doctor saw him and says it’s not serious, but he’s staying in bed until the doctor sees him tomorrow.”

I said I’d tell Wolfe and got the number of Younger’s room. After I hung up I got at the house phone and buzzed the plant rooms, and in a minute Wolfe’s voice blurted at me, “Well?”

“O’Garro just phoned. One’s coming at six and one at seven, but at the DA’s office Philip Younger’s heart began to flutter and he’s at the hotel in bed. Shall I go up and sit with him?”

“You must be back by six o’clock.”

I said I would and the connection went.

There was a slight problem. Years before, after a certain episode, I had made myself promise that I would never go on any errand connected with a murder case without a gun, but this wasn’t a murder case by the terms agreed upon. The job was to nail a thief. I decided that was quibbling, got my shoulder holster from the drawer and put it on, got the Marley .32 and loaded it and slipped it into the holster, went to the hall, and called to Fritz to come and bolt the door after me.

It was safe to assume that the floor clerk on the eighteenth floor of the Churchill would be stubborn about it, since journalists were certainly stalking the quintet, so I anticipated her by first finding Tim Evarts, the hotel’s first assistant security officer, not to be called a house dick, who owed me a little courtesy from past events. He obliged by phoning her, after I promised to set no fires and find no corpses, and all she did was look at both sides of my card and one side of me and wave me on.

Eighteen-twenty-six was about halfway down a long corridor. There was no one in sight anywhere except a chambermaid with towels, and I concluded that the city employees hadn’t invaded the hotel itself for surveillance. My first knock on the door of eighteen-twenty-six got me an invitation to come in, not too audible, and I opened the door and entered, and saw that LBA had done well by their guests. It was the fifteen-dollar size, with the twin beds headed against the wall at the left. On one of them, under the covers, was Old King Cole with a hangover, his mop of white hair tousled and his eyes sick.

I approached. “My name’s Archie Goodwin,” I told him. “From Nero Wolfe, on behalf of Lippert, Buff and Assa.” There was a chair there, and I sat. “We need to clear up a few little points about the contest.”

“Crap,” he said.

“That won’t do it,” I stated. “Not just that one word. Is the contest crap, or am I, or what?”

He shut his eyes. “I’m sick.” He opened them. “I’ll be all right tomorrow.”

“Are you too sick to talk? I don’t want to make you worse. I don’t know how serious a heart flutter is.”

“I haven’t got a heart flutter. I’ve got paroxysmal tachycardia, and it is never serious. I’d be up and around right now if it wasn’t for one thing — there are too many fools. The discomfort of paroxysmal tachycardia is increased by fear and anxiety and apprehension and nervousness, and I’ve got all of ’em on account of fools.”

He raised himself on an elbow, reached to the bed-stand for a glass of water, drank about a spoonful, and put the glass back. He bounced around and settled on his side, facing me.

“What kind of fools?” I asked politely.

“You’re one of ’em. Didn’t you come to ask me where I got the gun I shot that man Dahlmann with?”

“No, sir. Speaking for Nero Wolfe, we’re not interested in the death of Dahlmann except as it affects the contest and raises points that have to be dealt with.”

He snorted: “There you are. Crap. Why should it affect the contest at all? It happened to be last night that someone went there and shot him — some jealous woman or someone who hated him or was afraid of him or wanted to get even with him — and just because it happened last night they think it was connected with the contest. They even think one of us did it. Only a fool would think that. Suppose when he held up that paper, suppose I believed him when he said it was the answers, and I decided to kill him and get it. Finding out where he lived would have been easy enough, even the phone book. So I went there, and getting him to let me in was just as easy, I could tell him there was something about the agreement that I thought ought to be changed and I wanted to discuss it with him. Getting a chance to shoot him might be a little harder, since he might have a faint suspicion I had come to try to get the paper, but it could be managed. So I kill him and take the paper and get back to my hotel room, and where am I?”

I shook my head. “You’re telling it.”

“I’ve dug a hole and jumped in. If they go on with the contest on the basis of those answers, I’ve ruined my chances, because they’ll hold us here in the jurisdiction, or if I leave for Chicago before the body is found they’ll invite me back and I’ll have to come, and if I send in the right answers before my deadline I couldn’t explain how I got ’em. If they don’t go on with those answers, if they void them and give us new verses, all I’ve got for killing a man is the prospect of being electrocuted. So they’re fools for thinking one of us did it. Crap.”

“There’s another possibility,” I objected. “What if you were a fool yourself? I admit your analysis is absolutely sound, but what if the sight of that paper and the thought of half a million dollars carried you away, and you went ahead and did it and didn’t bother with the analysis until afterward? Then when you did realize it and saw where you were, for instance in the District Attorney’s office, I should think your heart would flutter no matter what name you gave it. I know mine would.”

He turned over on his back and shut his eyes. I sat and looked at him. He was breathing a little faster than normal, and a muscle in his neck twitched a couple of times, but there was no indication of a crisis. I had not scared him to death, and anyway, I had only promised Tim Evarts that I wouldn’t find a corpse, not that I wouldn’t make one.

He turned back on his side. “For some reason,” he said, “I feel like offering you a drink. You look a little like my son-in-law, that may be it. There’s a bottle of Scotch in my suitcase that he gave me. Help yourself. I don’t want any.”

“Thanks, but I guess not. Another time.”

“As you please. About my being a fool, I was one once, twenty-six years ago, back in nineteen-twenty-nine. I had stacked up a couple of million dollars and it all went. Fifty million others were fools along with me, but that didn’t help any. I decided I had had enough and got me a job selling adding machines, and never touched the market again. A few years ago my son-in-law made me quit work because he was doing very well as an architect, and that was all right, I was comfortable, but I always wanted something to do, and one day I saw the advertisement of this contest, and the first thing I knew I was in it up to my neck. I decided to make my daughter and son-in-law a very handsome present.”