Rex Stout: The Squirt and the Monkey

“I don’t want to be rude,” I told her, “but are they in the room with the monkey?”

“Oh, no.” She stayed serious. “Wouldn’t that be awful? Downstairs in the workroom.” She touched my arm. “Come on, do.”

I went downstairs with her.

In a large room at the rear on the ground floor the other four suspects were seated around a plain wooden table, dealing with the sandwiches. The room was a mess — drawing tables under fluorescent lights, open shelves crammed with papers, cans of all sizes, and miscellaneous objects, chairs scattered around, other shelves with books and portfolios, and tables with more stacks of papers. Messy as it was to the eye, it was even messier to the ear, for two radios were going full blast.

Marcelle Koven and I joined them at the lunch table, and I perked up at once. There was a basket of French bread and pumpernickel, paper platters piled with slices of ham, smoked turkey, sturgeon, and hot corned beef, a big slab of butter, mustard and other accessories, bottles of milk, a pot of steaming coffee, and a one-pound jar of fresh caviar. Seeing Pete Jordan spooning caviar onto a piece of bread crust, I got what he meant about liking to eat.

“Help yourself!” Pat Lowell yelled into my ear.

I reached for the bread with one hand and the corned beef with the other and yelled back, “Why doesn’t someone turn them down or even off?”

She took a sip of coffee from a paper cup and shook her head. “One’s By Hildebrand’s and one’s Pete Jordan’s! They like different programs when they’re working! They have to go for volume!”

It was a hell of a din, but the corned beef was wonderful and the bread must have been from Rusterman’s, nor was there anything wrong with the turkey and sturgeon. Since the radio duel precluded table talk, I used my eyes for diversion and was impressed by Adrian Getz, whom Koven called the Squirt. He would break off a rectangle of bread crust, place a rectangle of sturgeon on it, arrange a mound of caviar on top, and pop it in. When it was down he would take three sips of coffee and then start over. He was doing that when Mrs. Koven and I arrived and he was still doing it when I was full and reaching for another paper napkin.

Eventually, though, he stopped. He pushed back his chair, left it, went over to a sink at the wall, held his fingers under the faucet, and dried them with his handkerchief. Then he trotted over to a radio and turned it off, and to the other one and turned that off. Then he trotted back to us and spoke apologetically.

“That was uncivil, I know.”

No one contradicted him.

“It was only,” he went on, “that I wanted to ask Mr. Goodwin something before going up for my nap.” His eyes settled on me. “Did you know when you opened that window that sudden cold drafts are dangerous for tropical monkeys?”

His tone was more than mild, it was wistful. But something about him — I didn’t know what and didn’t ask for time out to go into it — got my goat.

“Sure,” I said cheerfully. “I was trying it out.”

“That was thoughtless,” he said, not complaining, just giving his modest opinion, and turned and trotted out of the room.

There was a strained silence. Pat Lowell reached for the pot to pour some coffee.

“Goodwin, God help you,” Pete Jordan muttered.

“Why? Does he sting?”

“Don’t ask me why, but watch your step. I think he’s a kobold.” He tossed his paper napkin onto the table. “Want to see an artist create? Come and look.” He marched to one of the radios and turned it on, then to a drawing table and sat.

“I’ll clean up,” Pat Lowell offered.

Byram Hildebrand, who had not squeaked once that I heard, went and turned on the other radio before he took his place at another drawing table.

Mrs. Koven left us. I helped Pat Lowell clear up the lunch table, but all that did was pass time, since both radios were going and I rely mostly on talk to develop an acquaintance in the early stages. Then she left, and I strolled over to watch the artists. So far nothing had occured to change my opinion of Dazzle Dan, but I had to admire the way they did him. Working from rough sketches which all looked alike to me, they turned out the finished product in three colors so fast I could barely keep up, walking back and forth. The only interruptions for a long stretch were when Hildebrand jumped up to go and turn his radio louder, and a minute later Pete Jordan did likewise. I sat down and concentrated on the experiment of listening to two stations at once, but after a while my brain started to curdle and I got out of there.

A door toward the front of the lower hall was standing open, and I looked in and stepped inside when I saw Pat Lowell at a desk, working with papers. She looked up to nod and went on working.

“Listen a minute,” I said. “We’re here on a desert island, and for months you have been holding me at arm’s length, and I’m desperate. It is not mere propinquity. In rags and tatters as you are, without make-up, I have come to look upon you—”

“I’m busy,” she said emphatically. “Go play with a coconut.”

“You’ll regret this,” I said savagely and went to the hall and looked through the glass of the front door at the outside world. The view was nothing to brag about, and the radios were still at my eardrums, so I went upstairs. Looking through the archway into the room at the left, and seeing no one but the monkey in its cage, I crossed to the other room and entered. It was full of furniture, but there was no sign of life. As I went up the second flight of stairs it seemed that the sound of the radios was getting louder instead of softer, and at the top I knew why. A radio was going the other side of one of the closed doors. I went and opened the door to the room where I had talked with Koven; not there. I tried another door and was faced by shelves stacked with linen. I knocked on another, got no response, opened it, and stepped in. It was a large bedroom, very fancy, with an oversized bed. The furniture and Sittings showed that it was co-ed. A radio on a stand was giving with a soap opera, and stretched out on a couch was Mrs. Koven, sound asleep. She looked softer and not so serious, with her lips parted a little and relaxed fingers curled on the cushion, in spite of the yapping radio on the bedside table. I damn well intended to find Koven, and took a couple of steps with a vague notion of looking under the bed for him, when a glance through an open door at the right into the next room discovered him. He was standing at a window with his back to me. Thinking it might seem a little familiar on short acquaintance for me to enter from the bedroom where his wife was snoozing, I backed out to the hall, pulling the door to, moved to the next door, and knocked. Getting no reaction, I turned the knob and entered.

The radio had drowned out my noise. He remained at the window. I banged the door shut. He jerked around. He said something, but I didn’t get it on account of the radio. I went and closed the door to the bedroom, and that helped some.

“Well?” he demanded, as if he couldn’t imagine who I was or what I wanted.

He had shaved and combed and had on a well-made brown homespun suit, with a tan shirt and red tie.

“It’s going on four o’clock,” I said, “and I’ll be going soon and taking my gun with me.”

He took his hands from his pockets and dropped into a chair. Evidently this was the Koven personal living room, from the way it was furnished, and it looked fairly livable.

He spoke. “I was standing at the window thinking.”

“Yeah. Any luck?”

He sighed and stretched his legs out. “Fame and fortune,” he said, “are not all a man needs for happiness.”