Rex Stout - The Second Confession

Saul took it from his pocket, shook the cartridges into his palm, and went to Jimmy and returned his property.

“I don’t see,” Mom said, “why we can’t stay and look around some more, just to make sure about those letters.”

“Oh, come on,” Jimmy said rudely.

They went.

Saul and I followed soon after. On our way down in the elevator he asked, “Did any of that stick at all?”

“Not on me. You?”

“Nope. It was hard to keep my face straight.”

“Do you think I should have kept on trying?”

He shook his head. “There was nothing to pry him loose with. You saw his eyes and his jaw.”

Before leaving I had gone to the bathroom for another look at my face, and it was a sight. But the blood had stopped coming, and I don’t mind people staring at me if they’re female, attractive, and between eighteen and thirty; and I had another errand in that part of town. Saul went with me because there was a bare possibility that he could help. It’s always fun to be on a sidewalk with him because you know you are among those present at a remarkable performance. Look at him and all you see is just a guy walking along, but I honestly believe that if you had shown him any one of those people a month later and asked him if he had ever seen that man before, it would have taken him not more than five seconds to reply, “Yes, just once, on Wednesday, June twenty-second, on Madison Avenue between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets.” He has got me beat a mile.

As it turned out he wasn’t needed for the errand. The building directory on the wall of the marble lobby told us that the offices of Murphy, Kearfot and Rony were on the twenty-eighth floor, and we took the express elevator. It was the suite overlooking the avenue, and everything was up to beehive standard. After one glance I had to reconsider my approach because I hadn’t expected that kind of a setup. I told the receptionist, who was past my age limit and looked good and tough, that I wanted to see a member of the firm, and gave my name, and went to sit beside Saul on a leather couch that had known a million fannies. Before long another one, a good match for the receptionist only older, appeared to escort me down a hall and into a corner room with four big double windows.

A big broad-shouldered guy with white hair and deep-set blue eyes, seated at a desk even bigger than Wolfe’s, got up to shake hands with me.

“Archie Goodwin?” he rumbled cordially, as if he had been waiting for this for years. “From Nero Wolfe’s office? A pleasure. Sit down. I’m Aloysius Murphy. What can I do for you?”

Not having mentioned any name but mine to the receptionist, I felt famous. “I don’t know,” I told him, sitting. “I guess you can’t do anything.”

“I could try.” He opened a drawer. “Have a cigar.”

“No, thanks. Mr. Wolfe has been interested in the death of your junior partner, Louis Rony.”

“So I understand.” His face switched instantly from smiling welcome to solemn sorrow. “A brilliant career brutally snipped as it was bursting into flower.”

That sounded to me like Confucius, but I skipped it. “A damn shame,” I agreed. “Mr. Wolfe has a theory that the truth may be holding out on us.”

“I know he has. A very interesting theory.”

“Yeah, he’s looking into it a little. I guess I might as well be frank. He thought there might be something around Rony’s office — some papers, anything — that might give us a hint. The idea was for me to go and look. For instance, if there were two rooms and a stenographer in one of them, I could fold her up — probably gag her and tie her — if there was a safe I could stick pins under her nails until she gave me the combination — and really do a job. I brought a man along to help, but even with two of us I don’t see how we can—”

I stopped because he was laughing so hard he couldn’t hear me. You might have thought I was Bob Hope and had finally found a new one. When I thought it would reach him I protested modestly, “I don’t deserve all that.”

He tapered off to a chuckle. “I should have met you long ago,” he declared. “I’ve been missing something. I want to tell you, Archie, and you can tell Wolfe, you can count on us here — all of us — for anything you want.” He waved a hand. “The place is yours. You won’t have to stick pins in us. Louis’s secretary will show you anything, tell you anything — all of us will. We’ll do everything we can to help you get at the truth. For a high-minded man truth is everything. Who scratched your face?”

He was getting on my nerves. He was so glad to have met me at last, and was so anxious to help, that it took me a full five minutes to break loose and get out of the room, but I finally made it.

I marched back to the reception room, beckoned to Saul, and, as soon as we were outside the suite, told him, “The wrong member of the firm got killed. Compared to Aloysius Murphy, Rony was the flower of truth.”

The pictures came out pretty well, considering. Since Wolfe had told me to order four prints of each, there was about half a bushel. That evening after dinner, as Saul and I sat in the office inspecting and assorting them, it seemed to me there were more of Madeline than I remembered taking, and I left most of them out of the pile we were putting to one side for Wolfe. There were three good ones of Rony — one full-face, one three-quarters, and one profile — and one of the shots of the membership card was something to be proud of. That alone should have got me a job on Life. Webster Kane wasn’t photogenic, but Paul Emerson was. I remarked on that fact to Wolfe as I went to put his collection on his desk. He grunted. I asked if he was ready for my report for the afternoon, and he said he would go through the pictures first.

Paul Emerson was one of the causes for the delay on my report. Saul and I had got back to the office shortly after six, but Wolfe’s schedule had been shattered by the emergency on the roof, and he didn’t come down until 6:28. At that minute he strode in, turned the radio on and dialed to WPIT, went to his chair behind the desk, and sat with his lips tightened.

The commercial came, and the introduction, and then Emerson’s acid baritone:

This fine June afternoon it is no pleasure to have to report that the professors are at it again — but then they always are — oh, yes, you can count on the professors. One of them made a speech last night at Boston, and if you have anything left from last week’s pay you’d better hide it under the mattress. He wants us not only to feed and clothe everybody on earth, but educate them also...

Part of my education was watching Wolfe’s face while Emerson was broadcasting. His lips, starting fairly tight, kept getting tighter and tighter until there was only a thin straight hairline and his cheeks were puffed and folded like a contour map. When the tension got to a certain point his mouth would pop open, and in a moment close, and it would start over again. I used to test my powers of observation, trying to spot the split second for the pop.

Minutes later Emerson was taking a crack at another of his pet targets:

... they call themselves World Federalists, this bunch of amateur statesmen, and they want us to give up the one thing we’ve got left — the right to make our own decisions about our own affairs. They think it would be fine if we had to ask permission of all the world’s runts and funny-looking dimwits every time we wanted to move our furniture around a little, or even to leave it where it is...

I anticipated the pop of Wolfe’s mouth by three seconds, which was par. I couldn’t expect to hit it right on the nose. Emerson developed that theme a while and then swung into his finale. He always closed with a snappy swat at some personality whose head was temporarily sticking up from the mob: