Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

I decided to stand pat. “I like it-” I started, and stopped, hearing the sound of a car coming. I turned my head to look, because the sound of a car coming got on my nerves after my recent experience with it, and also because it might be a police car if Rowcliff had decided not to wait till eleven o’clock for another try at Wolfe. But it was only a taxicab. They often came through there late at night, on their way to the nest, a company garage around the corner.

I turned back to them. “I like it here. Even if I had ideas, which I haven’t, my gun’s empty, so relax. I emptied it-”

I didn’t duck or dive, I just dropped, flat on the sidewalk, and started rolling. I was thinking I mustn’t bang my head against the stone of the stoop.

This time I didn’t see the man in the taxicab at all, even enough of a glimpse to see if he had something white over his face, I was moving too fast, rolling to get around the corner. I had, as I remember it, no sign of an impulse to reach for my gun. If I thought at all I suppose I was thinking that if a man in a taxicab wanted to make holes in Perrit and the face it was nothing to me. I had, and have, no notion what they were doing, but later examination showed that some of the noise I heard was made by them, using their own ammunition.

That noise stopped. The noise of the taxi moving from the scene tapered off. I stuck my head around the corner of the stoop, saw a form as flat as mine had been and much quieter, and scrambled to my feet. There were two forms, the other one around the other corner of the stoop, and it was twitching a little. I saw it still had a gun in its hand, so I stepped over and kicked it out and away. I knelt, first to one and then to the other, for a brief inspection, and finding it likely that no one would ever again consider it dangerous to turn his back on them, mounted the stoop to the front door and pushed the button for Fritz, my private rings. But the rings weren’t needed. Before my finger left the button the door opened for the crack of two inches allowed by the chain of the bolt and a voice came through.

“Archie?”

“Me, Fritz. Open-”

“Do you need help?”

“I need help to get in. Open up.”

He slid the bolt and I pushed and entered. “Did you kill somebody?” he inquired.

Wolfe’s bellow sounded from the hall one flight up. “Archie! What the devil is it now?”

His tone implied that I owed him apologies, past due, for interfering with his sleep.

“Corpses on the sidewalk in front, and it might have been me!” I called to him bitterly, and went to the office and dialed Rhinelander 4-1445, the 19 thPrecinct Station House.

IX

So Rowcliff didn’t have to wait until eleven o’clock for a go at Wolfe, after all. Very few performances were beyond the range of Wolfe’s special strain of gall, but keeping himself inaccessible with Dazy Perrit and a hired man shot down in front of his house while chatting with me would really have been out of bounds. At four-five A.M. he received Rowcliff and a sergeant in his bedroom. I missed that interview because I was occupied at the time, in the office with a committee of the squad, by request. I learned later that Wolfe had given them a peep under the lid but by no means removed it. He told them that Perrit had said he was being blackmailed by his daughter and wanted him to invent a way to make her stop, that he, Wolfe, had accepted the job, that the daughter had come to the office at Perrit’s command, and that he, Wolfe, had threatened to inform the police of Salt Lake City, where she was wanted, if she didn’t behave herself.

The other items he kept, such as Violet being a phony and the kind of lever she was using to heist her father. He left Beulah out entirely. I learned this later, and didn’t know then how far he was going, so down in the office with the committee I backed away from everything but the outdoor facts, adding nothing to my popularity but not really endangering my health.

The understanding had been that a specified number could enter for conversation with Wolfe and me, but that the house was not to be used for a command post, so the turmoil out front, complete with spotlights, was not allowed to spill over the sill, and Fritz was standing by. I was taken out twice, first to go all over it on the spot, and the second time to try to catch me in contradictions, but no one ever even suggested that I should go for a ride. From the way they acted it wasn’t hard to tell why: they were sorry for me. I hadn’t had time to analyze the situation enough to realize how awful right they were.

That went on long after daylight was showing, until the sun was entering at the window beyond Wolfe’s desk. As soon as they were all gone, including Rowcliff and the sergeant from Wolfe’s room, Fritz went to the kitchen and started breakfast. I mounted one flight, knocked on the door, was told to enter, and did so. Wolfe, in yellow silk pajamas and yellow slippers with turned-up toes, was coming out of the bathroom. “Well,” I began, “I hope to God-”

The phone rang. Whenever I left the office I plugged in extensions. Wolfe’s instrument, on his bedside table, was bright yellow and I didn’t like it. I crossed over and got it and told the transmitter, “Nero Wolfe’s office.”

“Archie? Saul. I want the boss.”

I told Wolfe, “Saul Panzer.”

He nodded, approaching. “Good. Go up to your room and look at your face. It needs washing.”

“So would yours if you had spent the night rolling around on sidewalks. You mean you have private business with Saul? Have you got him working on something?”

“Certainly. Mr. Perrit’s job.”

“Since when?”

“I phoned him last evening while you were taking Miss Page home. Go and wash your face.”

I went. Usually I resented it when Wolfe froze me out of operations with one of the men he used, but now I was too played out to bother, and besides, Saul was different. It was hard to resent anything about a guy as good as Saul Panzer. At the mirror in my bathroom I saw that there was no question about my face, so I attended to it, deciding to postpone shaving until after breakfast, and then went back down one flight to Wolfe’s room. He had finished his private talk with Saul and was sitting in his underwear, putting on his socks. “What do you want to discuss?” I asked him.

“Nothing.”

I stared indignantly. “Well, by God.”

He grunted. “At the moment there is nothing to discuss. You’re out of it. I told Mr. Rowcliff that I engaged to make Mr. Perrit’s daughter stop blackmailing him, and that I threatened her with exposure to the police, and that’s all. He’s an imbecile. He intimated that I am liable to prosecution for attempting to blackmail the daughter.” Wolfe straightened up. “By the way, I suppose it would be futile to call that number, Lincoln six-three two three two, now that Mr. Perrit is dead?”

“I’m out of it,” I said through my teeth and went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Out of it! Look who was calling Rowcliff an imbecile! I even forgot to taste the first three pancakes as they went down. My breakfast was interrupted four times by phone calls. Of course that would go on all day. Only one of the four, the last one, required reporting to Wolfe, which suited me fine, since I wished to keep communication with him at the lowest possible minimum. By that time he had finished breakfast and gone up to the plant room, so I gave him a buzz on the house phone. “A man called,” I told him, “and said his name is L. A. Schwartz and he’s Dazy Perrit’s lawyer. He wanted to come to see you immediately. I told him eleven o’clock. I have his number. If you regard him as out of it too, I can ring him and tell him not to come.”