Rex Stout - Champange for One

“Save it, Dinky. Saul, phone Cramer.”

Saul started to slide out. Byne reached and grabbed his sleeve. “Now wait a minute. Damn it, can’t you listen? I’m—”

“No,” I said. “No listening. You can have one minute to decide.” I looked at my watch. “In one minute either you and Mrs Usher come along to Nero Wolfe or we phone Cramer. One minute.” I looked at my watch. “Go.”

“Not the cops,” Mrs Usher said. “My God, not the cops.”

Byne began,” If you’d only listen—”

“No. Forty seconds.”

If you’re playing stud, and there’s only one card to come, and the man across has two jacks showing and all you have is a mess, it doesn’t matter what his hole card is, or yours either. Byne didn’t use up the forty seconds. Only ten of them had gone when he stretched his neck to look for a waiter and ask for his check.

Surveying Elaine Usher from my desk as she sat in the red leather chair, I told myself that Saul’s picture of her, pieced together from a dozen descriptions he had got, had been pretty accurate. Oval face, blue eyes set close, good skin, medium-cut blonde hair, around forty. I would have said a hundred and fifteen pounds instead of a hundred and twenty, but she might have lost a few in the last four days. I had put her in the red leather chair because I had thought it desirable to have Byne closer to me. He was between Saul and me, and Saul was between the two subjects. But my arrangement was soon changed.

“I prefer,” Wolfe said, “to speak with you separately, but first I must make sure that there is no misunderstanding. I intend to badger you, but you don’t have to submit to it. Before I start, or at any moment, you may get up and leave. If you do, you will be through with me; thenceforth you will deal with the police. I make that clear because I don’t want you bouncing up and down. If you want to go now, go.”

He took a deep breath. He had just come in from the dining-room, having had his coffee there while I reported on the summit conference at Tom’s Joint.

“We were forced to come here by a threat,” Byne said.

“Certainly you were. And I am detaining you by the same threat. When you prefer that to this, leave. Now, madam, I wish to speak privately with Mr Byne. Saul, take Mrs Usher to the front room.”

“Don’t go,” Byne told her. “Stay here.”

Wolfe turned to me. “You were right, Archie. He is incorrigible. It isn’t worth it. Get Mr Cramer.”

“No,” Elaine Usher said. She left the chair. “I’ll go.”

Saul was up. “This way,” he said, and went and opened the door to the front room and held it for her. When she had passed through he followed and closed the door.

Wolfe levelled his eyes at Byne. “Now, sir. Don’t bother to raise your voice; that wall and door are sound-proofed. Mr Goodwin has told me how you explained being in that restaurant with Mrs Usher. Do you expect me to accept it?”

“No,” Dinky said.

Of course. He had had time to realize that it wouldn’t do. If he had gone to see her because her daughter was at Grantham House, how had he learned that she was Faith’s mother? Not from the records and not from Mrs Irwin. From one of the other girls? It was too tricky.

“What do you substitute for it?” Wolfe asked.

“I told Goodwin that because the real explanation would have been embarrassing for Mrs Usher. Now I can’t help it. I met her some time ago, three years ago, and for about a year I was intimate with her. She’ll probably deny it. I’m pretty sure she will Naturally she would.”

“No doubt. And your meeting her this evening was accidental?”

“No,” Dinky said. He had also had time to realize that that was too fishy. He went on,” She phoned me this morning and said she was at the Christie Hotel , registered as Edith Upson. She had known that I was Mrs Robilotti’s nephew, and she said she wanted to see me and ask me about her daughter who had died. I told her I hadn’t been there Tuesday evening, and she said she knew that, but she wanted to see me. I agreed to see her because I didn’t want to offend her. I didn’t want it to get out that I had been intimate with Faith Usher’s mother. We arranged to meet at that restaurant.”

“Had you known previously that she was Faith Usher’s mother?”

“I had known that she had a daughter, but not that her name was Faith. She had spoken of her daughter when we—when I had known her.”

“What did she ask you about her daughter this evening?”

“She just wanted to know if I knew anything that hadn’t been in the papers. Anything about the people there or exactly what had happened. I could tell her about the people, but I didn’t know any more about what had happened than she did.”

“Do you wish to elaborate on any of this? Or add anything?”

“There’s nothing to add.”

“Then I’ll see Mrs Usher. After I speak with her I’ll ask you in again, with her present. Archie, take Mr Byne and bring Mrs Usher.”

He came like a lamb. He had thrown away his discard and made his draw and his bets, and was ready for the show-down. I opened the door for him, held it for Mrs Usher to enter, closed it, and returned to my desk. She went to the red leather chair, so Wolfe had to swivel to face her. Another item of Saul’s report on her had been that she liked men, and there were indications that men probably liked her—the way she handled her hips when she walked, the tilt of her head, the hint of a suggestion in her eyes, even now, when she was under pressure and when the man she was looking at was not a likely candidate for a frolic. And she was forty. At twenty she must have been a treat.

Wolfe breathed deep again. Exertion right after a meal was pretty rugged. “Of course, madam,” he said, “my reason for speaking with you and Mr Byne separately is transparent: to see if your account will agree with his. Since you have had no opportunity for collusion, agreement would be, if not conclusive, at least persuasive.”

She smiled. “You use big words, don’t you?” Something in her tone and her look conveyed the notion that for years she had been wanting to meet a man who used big words.

Wolfe grunted.” I try to use words that say what I mean.”

“So do I,” she declared, “but sometimes it’s hard to find the ones I want. I don’t know what Mr Byne told you, but all I can do is tell you the truth. You want to know how I happened to be with him there tonight, isn’t that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, I phoned him this morning and said I wanted to see him and he said he would meet me there at Tom’s Joint, I had never heard of it before, at a quarter past seven. So I went. That’s not very thrilling, is it?”

“Only moderately. Have you known him long?”

“I don’t really know him at all. I met him somewhere about a year ago, and I wish I could tell you where, but I’ve been trying to remember and I simply can’t . It was a party somewhere, but I can’t remember where. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. But yesterday I was sitting at the window thinking about my daughter. My dear daughter Faith.” She stopped to gulp, but it wasn’t very impressive. “And I remembered meeting a man named Byne, Austin Byne, and someone telling me, maybe he told me himself, that he was the nephew of the rich Mrs Robilotti who used to be Mrs Albert Grantham. And my daughter had died at Mrs Robilotti’s house, so maybe he could tell me about her, and maybe he could get Mrs Robilotti to see me so I could ask her about her. I wanted to learn all I could about my daughter.” She gulped.

It didn’t look good. In fact, it looked bad. Byne had been smart enough to invent one that she couldn’t be expected to corroborate; he had even warned that she would probably deny it; and what was worse, it was even possible that he hadn’t invented it. He might have been telling the truth, like a gentleman. The meeting of Wolfe’s two bright ideas at Tom’s Joint, which had looked so rosy when Saul told me they were together, might fizzle out entirely. Maybe he wasn’t a genius after all.