Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

The outcome arrived in something like a minute. It started with her shoulders going up and down in a minor convulsion, and then her head went forward and her hands went up to cover her face, and the regulation sounds began to come.

“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in a tone of horror, and got to his feet and went. In a moment, above the sounds Beulah was making, I heard the bang of his elevator door. I merely sat and waited, thinking it was natural for me to understand better than he did the most desirable and effective course of action when a young woman began to cry. After all, I thought, I see a good deal more of them than he does.

Time passed by. I was deciding the moment had come for a sympathetic hand on her shoulder when her face came up and she blurted, “Why haven’t you got sense enough to go too?”

It didn’t faze me. “I have,” I said politely, “but I was waiting for the noise to die down enough for you to hear me tell you that if you don’t want to go in the room where Morton is in your present condition, the room at the front on that floor is mine, is unlocked, and has a bathroom with a mirror.”

I left her alone with it. On the way out I warned Theodore what was going on in the potting room and advised him to find jobs elsewhere. On my floor I stopped in my room to make sure about clean towels in the bathroom and general appearances. As I returned to the hall the door of the south room opened and Morton was there.

“Where’s Miss Page?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

“She’s up looking at orchids,” I told him en route. “Relax. Lunch in ten minutes.”

Down in the office Wolfe was sitting at his desk, looking harassed.

I crossed to mine, sat, and told him, “They want a shoulder to cry on, but with her fiancй under the same roof I didn’t think it would be fitting. Morton is pacing-”

The phone rang. I answered it, and heard a voice I had been expecting to hear all day. I told Wolfe Inspector Cramer would like to speak to him. He got on and I stayed on.

“Nero Wolfe speaking, Mr. Cramer. How are you?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“The way I always am just before lunch. Hungry.”

“Well, enjoy it. This is just a friendly call. I wanted to let you know you were right as usual when you decided to keep it all to yourself and tell Rowcliff only one thing that was worth a damn, about Perrit’s daughter being wanted in Salt Lake. We got onto her through the Washington fingerprint files, as you knew we would. I don’t think she was his daughter at all. Her name was Angelina Murphy, though of course she used others. She had about ten years coming. I just wanted to tell you that, but I suppose I might as well ask if you have anything to add.”

“No-no, I think not.”

“Nothing at all? About the job you took on for Perrit?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, I didn’t expect it. Enjoy your lunch.”

I pushed the phone back. I turned to Wolfe and spoke with feeling. “At least I heard that before I died. Cramer knowing you’ve got things he could use and merely telling you to enjoy your lunch! No pressure, no hard words, nothing! Not even bothering to drop in on us! And you know why? He’s religious and he thinks it would be out of place! He thinks the only guy that belongs here now is a priest for the last rites!”

“Quite right,” Wolfe agreed. “It was in effect an obituary. If I were a sentimentalist I would be touched. Mr. Cramer has never before shown the slightest interest in my enjoyment of a meal. He thinks I haven’t long to live.”

“Including me.”

“Yes, you too, of course.”

“And what do you think?”

“I haven’t given it-”

The phone rang again. With a suspicion that it was Cramer, who had decided he had been too sentimental, I got it and spoke. The voice was as familiar as Cramer’s but it wasn’t his. “Saul Panzer,” I told Wolfe, and, since he didn’t give me the sign to keep off, I kept on. But it was brief and didn’t fill in any gaps for me.

“Saul?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No, sir.”

“How soon can you get here?”

“Eight to ten minutes.”

“There is a change or two in the program, dictated by circumstances. I’ll need you here earlier than I thought. Come and join us at luncheon-Miss Beulah Page, Mr. Morton Schane, Archie, and me.”

“Yes, sir. Probably eight minutes.”

XII

Whether Wolfe enjoyed his lunch or not, I didn’t. It is my habit to make big discounts anyhow, and that day I reached my all-time peak in skepticism. I didn’t think he had any program whatever. I thought his line that he needed Saul, and he knew what for, was unadulterated guff. I was sure that Cramer had laid off because he had all the stuff he wanted, through the flock of stools the police always know where to find, and he regarded Wolfe and me as bad company even for an inspector. I thought the only reason Wolfe asked Saul to lunch was to have someone to talk to about something pleasant.

The last thought proved to be sound. It was not a meal full of sparkle. Morton was aloof and not a bit intimate. Beulah, who showed no traces of the recent irrigation, was trying to pretend she wasn’t somewhere else, without great success. I was so firmly convinced that it was a hell of a time for a man to sit and eat that I had to grit my teeth to stay in my chair, and you can neither chew nor talk very well with your teeth gritted. So the conversation was almost exclusively confined to Wolfe and Saul. Saul, in a suit that didn’t fit, and needing a shave as usual, could do almost anything better than anyone I knew-even talk. They discussed plant germination, the meat shortage, books about Roosevelt, and the World Series.

At one-fifty-five Wolfe pushed his chair back and said he was sorry to end the meal so abruptly but callers were expected. He thought it best for Beulah and Morton to leave the way they had come.

Beulah protested that she wasn’t going to leave, that there were things she wanted to ask about. She would wait until the callers had gone. Then, Wolfe said, she could go back to the plant rooms and do her waiting there, and also Morton if he wished to stay.

“We’ll do that,” Beulah agreed. She was out of her chair and moving to the dining-room door. “Come on, Morton.”

But the law student balked. The way the light was I could see his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses, and they looked determined. His voice matched them. “I don’t like the way things look here. I don’t know what explanation you have given Miss Page about last night. Then what happened in front of this house afterwards. And asking Miss Page to sneak in the back way. Who are these callers you’re expecting?”

To my surprise, Wolfe obliged him. “One of them,” he said, “is a man named Fabian. The other is named Schwartz. L. A. Schwartz, a lawyer. A member of the bar.”

That was news to me. He must have invited Schwartz after I left the office.

“Are they connected with this-with Miss Page’s affairs?” Morton demanded.