Rex Stout: The Rubber Band

The inspector dropped his cigar in the tray. “Well, Walsh stopped at a lunch counter on Franklin near Broadway and ate. He kept looldng around, but Stebbins thinks he didn’t wise up. Then he took a surface car north and got off at Twenty-seventh Street and walked west. He went in the Seaboard Building and took the elevator and got off at the thirty-second floor and went into the executive offices of the Seaboard Products Corporation. Stebbins waited out in the hall. Walsh was in there nearly an hour. He took the elevator down again, and Stebbins didn’t want to take the same one and nearly lost him. He walked east and went into a drug store and used a telephone in a booth. Then he took the subway and went to a boarding house in East Sixty-fourth Street, where he lived, and he left again a little after half past five and walked to his job at Fifty-fifth Street. He got there a little before six.”

Wolfe had leaned back and closed his eyes. They all looked at him.

Cramer got out another cigar and bit off the end and fingered his tongue for the shreds. Hombert demanded, “Well, are you asleep?”

Wolfe didn’t move, but he spoke. “About that visit Mr. Walsh made at the Seaboard Products Corporation. Do you know whom he saw there?”

“No, how could I? Stebbins didn’t go in. Even if there had been any reason—the office was closed by the time I got Stebbins’s report. What difference does it make?”

“Not much.” Wolfe’s tone was mild, but to me, who knew it so well, there was a thrill in it. “No, not much. There are cases when a conjecture is almost as good as a fact—even, sometimes, better.” Suddenly he opened his eyes, sat up, and got brisk. “That’s all, gentlemen. It is past two o’clock, and Mr. Goodwin is yawning. You will hear from me tomorrow—today, rather.”

Skinner shook his head wearily. “Oh, no no no. Honest to God, Wolte, you’re the worst I’ve ever seen for trying to put over fast ones. There’s a lot to do yet. Could I have another highball?”

Wolfe sighed. “Must we start yapping again?” He wiggled a finger at the District Attorney. “I offered you a bargain, sir. I said if I could get replies to a few questions I would consider them and would then do what I could for you. Do you think I can consider them properly at this time of night? I assure you I cannot. I am not quibbling. I have gone much further than you gentlemen along the path to the solution of this puzzle, and I am confronted by one difficulty which must be solved before anything can be done. When it will be solved I cannot say. I may light on it ten minutes from now, while I am undressing for bed, or it may require extended investigation and labor. Confound it, do you realize it will be dawn in less than four hours? It was past three when I retired last night.”

He put his hands on the edge of his desk and pushed his chair back, rose to his feet, and pulled at the comers of his vest where a wide band of canary-yellow shirt puffed out.

“Daylight will serve us better. No more tonight, short of the rack and the thumbscrew. You will hear from me.”

Cramer got up too, saying to Hombert, “He’s always like this. You might as well stick pins in a rhinoceros,”

When, about a quarter after nine Wednesday morning, I went up to the plant rooms with a message, I thought that Wolfe’s genius had at last bubbled over and he had gone nuts for good. He was in the potting room, stand ing by the bench, with a piece of board about four inches wide and ten inches long in each hand. He paid no attention to me when I entered. He held his hands two feet apart and then swiftly brought them together, flat sides of the two pieces of board meeting with a loud clap. He did that several times. He shook his head and threw one of the boards down and began hitting things with the other one, the top of the bench, one of its legs and then another one, the seat of a chair, the palm of his hand, a pile of wrapping paper. He kept shaking his head. Finally, deciding to admit I was there, he tossed the board down and turned his eyes on me with ferocious hostility – “Well, sir?” he demanded.

I said in a resigned tone, “Cramer phoned again. That’s three times. He says that District Attorney Skinner got tight after he left here and is now at his office with a hangover, cutting off people’s heads. As far as that’s concerned, I’ve had four hours’ sleep two nights in a row and I’ve got a headache. He says that the publisher of the Gazette told the Secretary of State to go to hell over long distance. He wants to know if we have seen the morning papers. He says that two men from Washington are in Hombert’s office with copies of cables from London. He says that Hombert saw Clivers at his hotel half an hour ago and asked him about his visit to our office yesterday afternoon, and Clivers said it was a private matter and it will be a nice day if it don’t rain. He says you have got to open up or he will open you. In addition to that. Miss Fox and Miss Lindquist are having a dogfight because their nerves are going back on them. In addition to that, Fritz is on the warpath because Saul and Johnny hang out in the kitchen too much and Johnny ate up some tambo shells he was going to put mushrooms into for lunch. In addition to that, I can’t get you to tell me whether I am to go to the Hotel Portland to look at Clivers’ documents which came on the Berengaria. In addition to that …”

I stopped for breath.

Wolfe said, “You badger me. Those are all trivialities. look at me.” he picked up the board and threw it down again. “I am sacrificing my hours of pleasure in an effort to straighten out the only tangle that remains in this knot, and you harass me with these futilities. Did the Secretary of State go to hell? If so, tell the others to join him there.”

“Yeah, sure. I’m telling you, they’re all going to be around here again. I can’t hold them off.”

“Lock the door. Keep them out. I will not be hounded!”

He turned away, definitely. I threw up my hands and beat it. On my way downstairs I stopped a second at the door of the south room, and heard the voices of the two clients still at it. In the lower hall I listened at the kitchen door and perceived that Fritz was still shrill with fury. The place was a madhouse.

Wolfe had been impossible from the time I first went to his room around seven o’clock, because he hadn’t taken his phone when I buzzed him, to report the first call from Cramer. I had never seen him so actively unfriendly, but I didn’t really mind that, knowing he was only peeved at himself on account of his genius not working right. What got me on edge was first, I had a headache; second, Fritz and the clients had to unload their troubles on me; and third, I didn’t like all the cussings from outsiders on the telephone. It had been going on for over two hours and it was keeping up.

After taking another aspirin and doing a few morning chores around the office, I sat down at my desk and got out the plant records and entered some items from Horstmann’s reports of the day before, and went over some bills and so on. There were circulars and lists from both Richardt and Hoehn in the morning mail, also a couple of catalogues from England, and I glanced over them and laid them aside. There was a phone call from Harry Foster of the Gazette, who had found out somehow that we were supposed to know something, and I kidded him and backed him off. Then, a little after ten o’clock, the phone rang again, and the first thing I knew I was talking to the Marquis of Clivers himself. I had half a mind to get Wolfe on, but decided to take the message instead, and after I rang off I gathered up the catalogues and circulars and reports and slipped a rubber band around them and proceeded upstairs.