Rex Stout - The Second Confession

It was one of the help saying there was a call for Mr. Goodwin. I thanked her and then heard a voice I knew.

“Hello, Archie?”

“Right. Me.”

“This is a friend.”

“So say you. Let me guess. The phones here are complicated. I’m in a bedroom with Mr. Wolfe. If I pick up the receiver I get an outside line, but on the other hand your incoming call was answered downstairs.”

“I see. Well, I’m sitting here looking at an Indian holding down papers. I went out for a walk, but there was too much of a crowd, so I decided to ride and here I am. I’m sorry you can’t keep that date.”

“So am I. But I might be able to make it if you’ll sit tight. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I hung up, got to my feet, and told Wolfe, “Saul started to go somewhere, found he had a tail on him, shook it off, and went to the office to report. He’s there now. Any suggestions?”

Wolfe closed the book on a finger to mark the place. “Who was following him?”

“I doubt if he knows, but he didn’t say. You heard what I told him about the phone.”

Wolfe nodded and considered a moment. “How far will you have to go?”

“Oh, I guess I can stand it, even in the dark. Chappaqua is seven minutes and Mount Kisco ten. Any special instructions?”

He had none, except that since Saul was in the office he might as well stick there until he heard from us again, so I shoved off.

I left the house by the west terrace because that was the shortest route to the place behind the shrubbery where I had parked the car, and found a sign of life. Paul and Connie Emerson were in the living room looking at television, and Webster Kane was on the terrace, apparently just walking back and forth. I exchanged greetings with them on the fly and proceeded.

It was a dark night, with no stars on account of the clouds, but the wind was down. As I drove to Chappaqua I let my mind drift into a useless habit, speculating on who Saul’s tail had been — state or city employees, or an A, B, C, or D. After I got to a booth in a drugstore and called Saul at the office and had a talk with him, it was still nothing but a guess. All Saul knew was that it had been a stranger and that it hadn’t been too easy to shake him. Since it was Saul Panzer, I knew I didn’t have to check any on the shaking part, and since he had no news to report except that he had acquired a tail, I told him to make himself comfortable in one of the spare rooms if he got sleepy, treated myself to a lemon coke, and went back to the car and drove back to Stony Acres.

Madeline had joined the pair in the living room, or maybe I should just put it that she was there when I entered. When she came to intercept me the big dark eyes were wide open, but not for any effect they might have on me. Her mind was obviously too occupied with something else for dallying.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

I told her to Chappaqua to make a phone call. She took my arm and eased me along through the door into the reception hall, and there faced me to ask, “Have you seen Gwenn?”

“No. Why, where is she?”

“I don’t know. But I think—”

She stopped. I filled in. “I supposed she was off in a corner making up her mind.”

“You didn’t go out to meet her?”

“Now I ask you,” I objected. “I’m not even a worm, I just work for one. Why should she be meeting me?”

“I suppose not.” Madeline hesitated. “After dinner she told Dad she would let him know as soon as she could, and went up to her room. I went in and wanted to talk to her, but she chased me out, and I went to Mother’s room. Later I went back to Gwenn’s room and she let me talk some, and then she said she was going outdoors. I went downstairs with her. She went out the back way. I went back up to Mother, and when I came down again and found you had gone out I thought maybe you had met her.”

“Nope.” I shrugged. “She may have had trouble finding the answer in the house and went outdoors for it. After all, she said before bedtime and it’s not eleven yet. Give her time. Meanwhile you ought to relax. How about a game of pool?”

She ignored the invitation. “You don’t know Gwenn,” she stated.

“Not very well, no.”

“She has a good level head, but she’s stubborn as a mule. She’s a little like Dad. If he had kept off she might have had enough of Louis long ago. But now — I’m scared. I suppose your Nero Wolfe did the best he could, but he left a hole. Dad hired him to find out something about Louis that would keep Gwenn from marrying him. Is that right?”

“Right.”

“And the way Nero Wolfe put it, one of four things had to happen. Either he had to quit the job, or Dad had to fire him, or Gwenn had to believe what he said about Louis and drop him, or he had to keep on and get proof. But he left out something else that could happen. What if Gwenn went away with Louis and married him? That would fix it too, wouldn’t it? Would Dad want Wolfe to go on, to keep after Louis if he was Gwenn’s husband? Gwenn wouldn’t think so.” Madeline’s fingers gripped my arm. “I’m scared! I think she went to meet him!”

“I’ll be damned. Did she take a bag?”

“She wouldn’t. She’d know I’d try to stop her, and Dad too — all of us. If your Nero Wolfe is so damn smart, why didn’t he think of this?”

“He has blind spots, and people running off to get married is one of them. But I should have — my God, am I thick. How long ago did she leave?”

“It must have been an hour — about an hour.”

“Did she take a car?”

Madeline shook her head. “I listened for it. No.”

“Then she must have—” I stopped to frown and think. “If that wasn’t it, if she just went out to have more air while she decided, or possibly to meet him here somewhere and have a talk, where would she go? Has she got a favorite spot?”

“She has several.” Madeline was frowning back at me. “An old apple tree in the back field, and a laurel thicket down by the brook, and a—”

“Do you know where there’s a flashlight?”

“Yes, we keep—”

“Get it.”

She went. In a moment she was back, and we left by the front door. She seemed to think the old apple tree was the best bet, so we circled the house halfway, crossed the lawn, found a path through a shrubbery border, and went through a gate into a pasture. Madeline called her sister’s name but no answer came, and when we got to the old apple tree there was no one there. We returned to the vicinity of the house the other way, around back of the barn and kennels and other buildings, with a halt at the barn to see if Gwenn had got romantic and saddled a horse to go to meet her man, but the horses were all there. The brook was in the other direction, in the landscape toward the public road, and we headed that way. Occasionally Madeline called Gwenn’s name, but not loud enough to carry to the house. We both had flashlights. I used mine only when I needed it, and by that time our eyes had got adjusted. We stuck to the drive until we reached the bridge over the brook and then Madeline turned sharp to the left. I admit she had me beat at cross-country going in the dark. The bushes and lower limbs had formed the habit of reaching out for me from the sides, and while Madeline hardly used her light at all, I shot mine right or left now and then, as well as to the front.

We were about twenty paces from the drive when I flashed my light to the left and caught a glimpse of an object on the ground by a bush that stopped me. The one glimpse was enough to show me what it was — there was no doubt about that — but not who it was. Madeline, ahead of me, was calling Gwenn’s name. I stood. Then she called to me, “You coming?” and I called back that I was and started forward. I was opening my mouth to tell her that I was taking time out and would be with her in a minute, when she called Gwenn’s name again, and an answer came faintly through the trees in the night. It was Gwenn’s voice.