Rex Stout - Before Midnight

“Then have I been wrong all along? Is it okay for you to tell me a direct lie when we’re alone?”

“No. It never has been.”

“And it isn’t now?”

“No.”

“You haven’t lied to me about the answers?”

“No.”

“I see. Then I’d better keep everybody off your neck this afternoon. If you haven’t already got a program for tonight’s meeting, and evidently you haven’t, I’m glad it’s up to you and not me.”

I went to my desk and rolled the typewriter back in place, to have something to do. I like to think I can see straight, and during the past hour or so I had completely sold myself on the idea that I knew now what Saul Panzer’s errand had been; and I don’t like to buy a phony, especially from myself. Pushing the typewriter stand back, I banged it against the edge of my desk, not intentionally, and Wolfe looked at me in surprise.

By four o’clock everybody was set for the evening party with one exception. Wheelock, Younger, Buff, and Heery had been reminded. O’Garro, Assa, Rollins, and Hansen didn’t need to be. As for Susan Tescher, Hibbard had called and said she would be present provided he could come along, and I said we’d be glad to have him. The exception was Gertrude Frazee. I tried her five times after lunch, three times from the kitchen and twice from my room, and didn’t get her.

When, at four o’clock, Fritz and I heard Wolfe’s elevator ascending to the roof, we went to the office and made some preliminary preparations. There would be ten of them, eleven if I got Frazee, so chairs had to be brought from the front room and dining room. Wolfe had said there should be refreshments, so a table had to be placed at the end of the couch, covered with a yellow linen cloth, with napkins and other accessories. Fritz had already started on canapés and other snacks and filling the vacuum bucket with ice cubes. There was no need to check the supply of liquids, since Wolfe does that himself at least once a week. He hates to have anybody, even a policeman or a woman, ask for something he hasn’t got. When we had things under control Fritz returned to the kitchen and I went to my desk and got at the phone for another try for Frazee.

By gum, I got her, no trouble at all. Her own voice, and she admitted she remembered me. She was a little frosty, asking me what I wanted, but I overlooked it.

“I’m calling,” I said, “to ask you to join us at a gathering at Mr. Wolfe’s office at nine o’clock this evening. The other contestants will be here, and Mr. Heery, and members of the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa.”

“What’s it for?”

“To discuss the situation as it stands now. Since the contestants have received a list of the answers from some unknown source, there must be—”

“I haven’t received any answers from any source, known or unknown. I’m expecting word Wednesday morning from my friends at home, and I’ll have my answers in by the deadline. I’ve heard enough of this trick.”

She was gone.

I cradled the phone, sat and gave it a thought, buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and got Wolfe.

“Do you want Miss Frazee here tonight?” I asked him.

“I want all of them here. I said so.”

“Yeah, I heard you. Then I’ll have to go get her. She just told me on the phone that she hasn’t received any answers and she’s heard enough of this trick. And hung up. If she’s clean, she tore up the envelope and paper and flushed them down the toilet, and she’s standing pat. Do you want her?”

“Yes. Phone again?”

“No good. She’s not in a mood to chat.”

“Then you’ll have to go.”

I said okay, went to the kitchen to ask Fritz to come and bolt after me, got my hat and coat, and left.

The clock above the bank of elevators at the Churchill said five-seventeen. On the way up in the taxi I had considered three different approaches and hadn’t cared much for any of them, so my mind was occupied and I didn’t notice the guy who entered the elevator just before the door closed and backed up against me. But when he got out at the eighteenth, as I did, and crossed over to the floor clerk and told her, “Miss Frazee, eighteen-fourteen,” I took a look and recognized him. It was Bill Lurick of the Gazette , who is assigned to milder matters than homicide only when there are no homicides on tap. I thought, By God, she’s been croaked, and stepped on it to catch up with him, on his way down the hall, and told him hello.

He stopped. “Hi, Goodwin. You in on this? What’s up?”

“Search me. I’m taking magazine subscriptions. What brought you?”

“Always cagey. The subtle elusive type. Not me, ask me a question I answer it.” He moved on. “We got word that Miss Gertrude Frazee would hold a press conference.”

Of course that was a gag, but when we turned the corner and came to eighteen-fourteen, and I got a look inside through the open door, it wasn’t. There were three males and one female in sight, and I knew two of them: Al Riordan of the Associated Press and Missy Coburn of the World-Telegram . Lurick asked a man standing just inside if he had missed anything, and the man said no, she insisted on waiting until the Times got there, and Lurick said that was proper, they wouldn’t start Judgment Day until the Times was set to cover. A man approached down the hall and exchanged greetings, and entered, and somebody said, “All right, Miss Frazee. This is Charles Winston of the Times.”

Her voice came: “The New York Times?”

“Correct. All others are imitations. Do you think one of the contestants killed Louis Dahlmann?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” I couldn’t see her, but she kept her voice up and spoke distinctly. “I asked you to come here because the American public ought to know, especially American women, that a gigantic swindle is being perpetrated. I have been accused by three people of getting a list of the contest answers in the mail, and it’s not true. They say the other contestants got lists of the answers too, and I don’t know whether they did or not, but they have no right to accuse me. It’s an insult to American women. It’s a trick to wreck the contest and get out of paying the prizes to those who have earned them, and it’s a despicable thing to do. And it’s me they want to cheat. They’re afraid of all the publicity the Women’s Nature League is getting at last, they’re afraid American women will begin to listen to our great message—”

“Excuse me, Miss Frazee. We need the facts. Who are the three people that accused you?”

“One was a policeman, not in uniform, I don’t know his name. One was a man named Hansen, a lawyer, I think his first name is Rudolph, he represents the contest people. The third was a man named Goodwin, Archie Goodwin, he works for that detective, Nero Wolfe. They’re all in it together. It’s a dirty conspiracy to—”

I had my notebook out, along with the journalists, chiefly for the novelty of participating in a press conference without paying dues to the American Newspaper Guild, and I got it all down, but I doubt if it’s worth passing on. It developed into a seesaw. She wanted to concentrate on the Women’s Nature League, of which they had already had several doses, and they wanted to know about the alleged list of answers received by the contestants, which would have rated the front page on account of its bearing on the murder if they could nail it down. But they couldn’t very well get the nail from her, since she was claiming she had never got such a list and knew nothing about it. They kept working on her anyway until Lurick suddenly exclaimed, “Hey, Goodwin’s right here!” and headed for the door.