Rex Stout: Door to Death

Most of us could get our eyes on him without turning, but Wolfe, in his chair with a high wide back, had to lean over and screw his head around. While he was doing that Donald was rising to his feet, and Joseph G. and Imbrie were both moving. I moved faster. When I had passed them I whirled and snapped, “Take it easy. He came with us and he don’t bite.”

They started ejaculating and demanding. Wolfe ignored them and asked Saul, “Did you find anything?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Useful?”

“I think so, yes, sir.” Saul extended a hand with a piece of folded paper in it.

Wolfe took it and commanded me, “Archie, your gun.”

I already had it out. It wasn’t desirable to have them anywhere near Wolfe while he examined Saul’s find. I poked the barrel against Joseph G. and told him, “More formality. Back up.”

He was still ejaculating but he went back, and the others with him, and I turned sideways enough to have all in view. Wolfe had unfolded the sheet of paper and was reading it. Saul was at his right hand, and he too was displaying a gun.

Wolfe looked up. “I should explain,” he said, “how this happened. This is Mr. Saul Panzer, who works for me. When you went to the kitchen with me he entered from the greenhouse, went upstairs, and began to search. I was not satisfied that the police had been sufficiently thorough.” He fluttered the paper. “This proves me right. Where did you find it, Saul?”

“I found it,” Saul said distinctly, “under the mattress on the bed in the room of Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie.”

Vera and Neil both made noises, and Neil came forward to where my arm stopped him.

“Take it easy,” I advised him. “He didn’t say who put it there, he just said where he found it.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Pitcairn inquired, her voice not quite as firm.

I’ll read it,” Wolfe told her. “As you see, it’s a sheet of paper. The writing is in ink, and I would judge the hand to be feminine. It is dated December sixth, yesterday — no, since it’s past midnight, the day before yesterday. It says:

“Dear Mr. Pitcairn:

“I suppose now I will never call you Joe, as you wanted me to. I am quite willing to put my request in writing, and I only hope you will put your answer in writing too. As I told you, I think your gift to me should be twenty thousand dollars. You have been so very sweet, but I have been sweet too, and I really think I deserve that much.

“Since I have decided to leave here and get married I don’t think you should expect me to wait more than a day or two for the gift. I’ll expect you in my room tonight at the usual time, and I hope you’ll agree how reasonable I am.”

Wolfe looked up. “It’s signed ‘Dini,’” he stated. “Of course it can be authenti—”

“I never saw it!” Vera Imbrie cried. “I never—”

But her lines got stolen. For my part, I didn’t even give her a glance. Their faces had all been something to see while Wolfe had read, as might have been expected, but by the time he had reached the third sentence it was plain that Donald was in for something special in the way of moods. First his face froze, then it came loose and his mouth opened, and then the blood rushed up and it was purple. He was a quick-change artist if I ever saw one, and, as I say, I had no glance to spare for Vera Imbrie when she cried out. Then Donald took over.

“So that’s why you wouldn’t let me marry her!” he screamed, and jumped at his father.

I had the gun, sure, but that was for us, not for them if and when their ranks broke. The women were helpless, and Neil Imbrie would have had to be bigger and faster than he was to stop that cyclone.

Donald toppled his father to his knees more by bodily impact than by his swinging fists, kicked him down the rest of the way, and bent over him screaming, “You thought I was no man! But I was with her! I loved her! For the first time — I loved her! And you wouldn’t let me and she was going away and now I know! By God, if I could kill her I can kill you too! I can! I can!”

It looked as if he might try to prove it, so I went and grabbed him, and Saul came to help.

“Oh, my son,” Mrs. Pitcairn moaned.

Wolfe looked at her and growled, “Mr. Krasicki is a woman’s son too, madam.” I didn’t think he had it in him.

At six o’clock the next afternoon but one I was at my desk in the office, catching up on neglected details, when I heard the sound of Wolfe’s elevator descending from the plant rooms, and a moment later he entered, got himself comfortable in his chair back of his desk, rang for beer, leaned back, and sighed with deep satisfaction.

“How’s Andy making out?” I asked.

“Considering the blow he got, marvelously.”

I put papers in a drawer and swiveled to face him.

“I was just thinking,” I said, not offensively, “that if it hadn’t been for you Dini Lauer might still be alive and giving males ideas. Ben Dykes told me an hour ago on the phone that Donald has admitted, along with other things, that her telling him she was leaving and going to get married was what put him into a mood to murder. If you hadn’t offered Andy a job he wanted to take he might not have got keyed up enough to talk her into marrying him — or anyhow saying she would. So in a way you might say you killed her.”

“You might,” Wolfe conceded, taking the cap from one of the bottles of beer Fritz had brought.

“By the way,” I went on, “Dykes said that ape Noonan is still trying to get the DA to charge you for destroying evidence. Burning that letter you wrote to Pitcairn, signing Dini’s name.”

“Bah.” He was pouring and watching the foam. “It wasn’t evidence. No one ever saw what was on it. It could have been blank. I merely read it to them — ostensibly.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyhow the DA is in no position to charge you with anything, let alone destroying evidence. Not only has Donald told it and signed it, how she was his first and only romance, how his parents threatened to cross him off the list if he married her, how he begged her not to marry Andy and she laughed at him, how he got her to split a bottle of midnight beer with him and put morphine in hers, and even how he lugged her into the greenhouse to make it nice for Andy — not only that, but Vera Imbrie has contributed details of some contacts between Donald and Dini which she saw.”

Wolfe put down the empty glass and got out his handkerchief to wipe his lips. “That of course will help,” he said complacently.

I grunted. “Help is no word for it. Would it do any good to ask you exactly what the hell you would have done if they had all simply sneered when you read that letter?”

“Not much.” He poured more beer. “I knew one of them was toeing a thin and precarious line, and probably more than one. I thought a good hard jolt would totter him or her, no matter who it was, and possibly others. That was why I had Saul find it in the Imbries’ room; they had to be jolted too. If all of them had simply sneered, it would at least have eliminated Mr. Pitcairn and his son, and I would have proceeded from there. That would have been a measurable advance, since up to that point a finger pointed nowhere and I had eliminated no one but Andy, who—”

He stopped abruptly, pushed his chair back, arose, muttered, “Good heavens, I forgot to tell Andy about those Miltonia seedlings,” and marched out.

I got up and went to the kitchen to chin with Fritz.