Rex Stout - Over My Dead Body

He glanced at her and caught her nod. "Well! Nero Wolfe? That ought to do it. I was told that Miss Tormic said yesterday that she was with me continuously."

"Yeah. What do you say?"

His brow went up again. "I couldn't very well call Miss Tormic a liar. Could I? Let's go down to the office. Driscoll isn't there yet, but he should be, any minute-"

"Then she was with you? You realize that in that case she can't possibly be held on Driscoll's charge?"

"Oh, yes, I quite realize that. But unfortunately there are those two people who claim to have seen her in the hall." He pointed. "Right there, not ten feet from the door of the locker room. And of course Driscoll too."

He was moving. I obstructed him. "Look here, Mr Ludlow, if you'll assure me that you'll stick to it-"

"My dear chap! Assure you? This sort of thing must be handled-anyhow, a dozen or more people have been made acquainted with this charge against Miss Tormic, and whatever is said they should hear. To clear it up, you know."

They were all moving, for the stairs, and I couldn't obstruct all of them, so I went with the current. It was so loony that it dazed me. Carla looked worried and Ludlow looked bland. As for Neya, her attitude could have come only from the sublime assurance of innocence, or the sublime asiniiity of a niicompoop, or mix it yourself. Here she had a witness who might have been wheedled into standing fast with a class A alibi and she wasn't even bothering to toss him a suggestion. As I trailed them downstairs and entered the office with them, I was trying to figure out a method of enticing Driscoll down to 35th Street, for it certainly seemed likely it would come to that.

The office was the big room at the rear of the ground floor. There was a large red carpet and a couple of desks, and chairs scattered around. The walls were decorated with pictures of people dancing and fencing, or standing holding a sticker, with a large one of Miltan in some kind of a uniform, and with swords and daggers hanging here and there. I knew the picture was Miltan because Carla Lovchen took me across and introduced me to him and his wife. He was small and thin, next door to a runt, but wiry-looking, and had black eyes and hair and a moustache which pointed due east and west. He looked and acted harassed, and as soon as he shook hands with me darted off somewhere. His wife, in spite of her New York clothes and her 1938 hair-do, looked like one of those coloured pictures in the National Geographic entitled "Peasant Woman of Wczibrrcy Leading a Bear to Church." At that, she was handsome if you like the type, and she had shrewd eyes.

I went and stood by a glass cabinet which displayed an assortment of curios and implements, among them a long, thin rapier with no edge and a blunt point which apparently wasn't a rapier, siice a card leaniig against it said: "This йpйe was used by Nikola Miltan at Paris in 1931 in winning the International Championship." I looked around. He was across the room, chinning with a broad-shouldered six-footer maybe thirty years old, with a slightly pushed-in nose and a vacant look to go with it. I looked further. If by any chance Wolfe's long-lost daughter hadn't piiched Driscoll's diamonds, it was probable that the person who had was among those present. Carla Lovchen's voice came, beside me:

"But you. you aren't doing anything."

I shrugged. "Nothing I can do. Not right now. What's Miltan waiting for?"

"Mr Driscoll isn't here yet."

"Did he say he would be here?"

"Of course he did. He only agreed to wait until now to go to the police."

"Who's that guy Miltan's talking to?"

She looked. "His name is Gill. He's a dancing client. It was he who was with Belinda Reade yesterday when they saw Neya in the hall. They say they did."

"Which one's Belinda Reade?"

"Over there standing by a chair. The beautiful one, with hair like yellow amber, talking to the young man."

"Check. Baby doll with a new silk dress and pipe earrings. Not to mention the young man. I seem to recognize him from perhaps the movies. Who is he?"

"Donald Barrett."

"The son of John P. Barrett of Barrett amp; De Russy, who got you girls a job here?"

"Yes."

"Who are those other girls?"

"Well. the three in the corner, and the one sitting by the end of the desk, teach dancing. That one talking now with Mrs Miltan is Zorka."

I boosted the brows. "Zorka?"

"Yes, the famous couturiиre. She charges four hundred dollars for a dress. That would be over twenty thousand dinars."

"She looks like a picture in our Bible at home of the dame that cut off Samson's hair. I forget her name, but it wasn't Zorka. Does she sell diamonds at her place?"

"I don't know."

"She wouldn't those, anyway. Who's the chinless wonder with his-hold it. Miltan's going to make a speech."

The йpйe champion, with Percy Ludlow standing beside him, was in the middle of the room trying to collect eyes. Some of them didn't get it and he claimed their attention by clappiig his hands. Two of them went on talking and his wife shushed them.

"If you please." He sounded as harassed as he looked. "Ladies and gentlemen. If you please, Mr Driscoll has not arrived. It is very disagreeable, asking you to wait. He should be here. Mr Ludlow has something to say."

Percy Ludlow looked around at the faces with complete aplomb. "Well," he observed in a conversational tone, "really, I don't quite see that we should hang around waiting for Driscoll. It's his row, you know. I've an explanation to make that I'd like you all to hear, because all of you know of Driscoll's absurd accusation regarding Miss Tormic. You'll understand it better if you'll observe the clothes I'm wearing. This is the suit I had on yesterday. Didn't any of you notice anything peculiar about it?"

"Certainly," said a voice promptly, fluttering the r like a moth on a marathon. "I did."

He smiled at her. "What did you notice, Madame Zorka?"

"I noticed that the material is of the same pattern, perfectly, as the one Mr Driscoll was wearing."

Two additional female voices chimed in simultaneously, "So did I," and other voices murmured.

Ludlow nodded. "Apparently Driscoll agrees with me on tailors." His tone sounded as if there were something about that faintly deplorable. "The fabric is identical. I wondered that none of you mentioned it yesterday. Perhaps you did, but not to me. Of course the coincidence explains why when Miss Tormic went to my locker to get my cigarettes from my coat, and Driscoll saw her, he thought the coat was his own. My locker adjoined his."

There was a round of ejaculations. Eyes moved from his face to that of Neya Tormic and back again. I felt Carla Lovchen's fingers gripping my elbow, but I didn't react, because I was trying to keep my brain cleared for action.

Ludlow continued in the same easy tone, "Yesterday when Miss Tormic was suddenly confronted with Driscoll's ugly accusation, naturally she was flustered. Impulsively and perhaps foolishly, she denied having been in the locker room. Hearing that denial, I was a little flustered myself. It would have produced a most unfortunate impression if I had contradicted her on the spot, so I temporized and confirmed her statement that she had been with me continuously in the end room. But, as it turned out, that was no go. Driscoll was positive that it was Miss Tormic he had seen with his coat. Miss Reade and Mr Gill both declared that they had seen her in the hall near the door of the locker room shortly prior to four-thirty. So it was clear that the only thing for it was the truth, which is that while we were fencing yesterday the strap of my pad broke and I had to change it, and we felt like a cigarette and found that we had none, and while I was changing the pad she took my key and went to the locker room for my cigarettes."