Rex Stout - Triple Jeopardy

I a man who would break rules too--if you had to." Ip gave her a sharp look, suspicious, but if she was trying to jitter me she was very good. All that showed in her blue ; was the scare that had put them on the run and the hope me they were hanging on to for dear life. I looked at Carl. : scare was there too, but I couldn't see the hope. Still he : solid on the chair, with no sign of trembling, as I thought * myself that it would have been no surprise to him if I had eked up the phone and called the cops. Either he had his

share of guts or he had run out entirely. I was irritated. "Damn it," I protested, "you bring it here lalready broke. What did you beat it for? That alone fixes | you. He was questioning the others too and he was concenJ tearing on last night. What about last night? What were you i doing, breaking some more rules?"

They both started to answer, but she let him take it. He sisaid no, they weren't. They had gone straight home from I work and eaten in their room as usual. Tina had washed

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some clothes, and Carl had read a book. Around nine they had gone for a walk, and had been back in their room and in bed before ten-thirty.

I was disgusted. "You sure did it up," I declared. "If you're clean for last night, why didn't you stay put? You must have something in your heads or you wouldn't have stayed alive and got this far. Why didn't you use it?"

Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn't make me want to smile back. "A policeman asking questions," he said in the level tone he had used before, "has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home�especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman's questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I�we do not have one."

"You see," Tina said. "Here, take it." She got up and came to me, extending a hand with the money in it. "Take it, Mr. Goodwin! Just tell us where to go, all the little facts that will help us�"

"Or we thought," Carl suggested, not hopefully, "that you might give us a letter to some friend, in this Ohio perhaps� not that we should expect too much for fifty dollars."

I looked at them, with my lips pressed together. The morning was shot now anyway, with Wolfe sore and my chores not done. I swiveled to my desk and picked up the phone. Any one of three or four city employees would probably find out for me what kind of errand had taken a dick named Wallen to the Goldenrod Barber Shop, unless it was something very special. But with my finger in the dial hole I hesitated and then replaced the phone. If it was something hot I would be starting PD cars for our address, and Wolfe and I both have a prejudice against cops yanking people out of his office, no 64

matter who they are, unless we ourselves have got them ready for delivery. So I swiveled again. Carl was frowning at me, his head moving from side to side. Tina was standing tense, the money clutched in her fist.

"This is silly," I said. "If they're really after you, you'd i be throwing your money away on carfare to Ohio or anywhere else. Save it for a lawyer. I'll have to go up there and see what it's all about." I got up, crossed to the soundproof door to the front room, and opened it. "You can wait here. In here, please."

'We'll go," Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. "We won't bother you any more. Come, Carl--" ; "Skip it," I said curtly. "If this amounts to anything more than petty larceny you'd be nabbed sure as hell. This is my 'day for breaking a rule, and I'll be back soon. Come on, I'll put you in here, and I advise you to stay put."

They looked at each other.

"I like him," Carl said.

Tina moved. She came and passed through into the front room, and Carl was right behind her.

I told them to sit down and relax and not get restless, shut the door, went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was seated at the far end of the long table, drinking beer, and told him, "The check from Pendexter came and has been deposited. 1 That pair of foreigners have got themselves in a mess. I put them in the front room and told them to stay there until I get back."

"Where are you going?" he demanded.

"A little detective work, not in your class. I won't be gone ' long. You can dock me."

I left.

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aa

gnaHE Goldenrod Barber Shop was in the basement of

Goldenrod, with only six chairs and usually only four of them manned, and two manicures, was no Framinelli's, but it was well equipped and clean, and anyhow it had Ed, who was a little rough at tilting a head maybe but knew exactly how to handle my hair and had a razor so sharp and slick you never knew it was on you.

I hadn't shaved that morning and as, at noon, I paid the taxi driver, entered the building, and descended the stairs to the basement, my plan of campaign was simple. I would get in Ed's chair, waiting if necessary, and ask him to give me a once-over, and the rest would be easy.

But it was neither simple nor easy. A medium-sized mob of white-collar workers, buzzing and chattering, was ranged three deep along the wall of the corridor facing the door of the shop. Others, passing by in both directions, were stopping to try to look in, and a flatfoot, posted in the doorway, was telling them to keep moving. That did not look promising, or else it did, if that's how you like things. I swerved aside and halted for a survey through the open door and the glass. Joel Fickler, the boss, was at the rack where Carl usually presided, taking a man's coat to put on a hanger. A man with his hat on was backed up to the cashier's counter, with 66

his elbows on it, facing the whole shop. Two other men with f their hats on were seated near the middle of the row of chairs for waiting customers, one of them next to the little table for magazines. They were discussing something without much enthusiasm. Two of the barbers' chairs, Ed's and Tom's, were occupied. The other two barbers, Jimmie and Philip, were on their stools against the wall. Janet, the other manicure, was not in sight.

I stepped to the doorway and was going on in. The flatfoot blocked me.

I lifted my brows at him. "What's all the excitement?" "Accident in here. No one allowed in." "How did the customers in the chairs get in? I'm a cus^tomer." "Only customers with appointments. You got one?" "Certainly." I stuck my head through the doorway and [yelled, "Ed! How soon?"

The man leaning on the counter straightened up and | turned for a look. At sight of me he grunted. "I'll be damned. Who whistled for you?"

,. The presence of my old friend and enemy Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide gave the thing an entirely different flavor. Up to then I had just been mildly curious, i floating along. Now all my nerves and muscles snapped to , attention. Sergeant Stebbins is not interested in petty larceny. '�I didn't care for the possibility of having shown a pair of |, murderers to chairs in our front room.

"Good God," Purley grumbled, "is this going to turn into >one of them Nero Wolfe babies?"

"Not unless you turn it." I grinned at him. "Whatever it is, I dropped in for a shave, that's all, and here you boys are, to my surprise." The flatfoot had given me leeway, and I had crossed the sill. "I'm a regular customer here." I turned to Fickler, who had trotted over to us. "How long have I been leaving my hair here, Joel?"

None of Fickler's bones were anywhere near the surface jjf-except on his bald head. He was six inches shorter than me, I which may have been one reason why I had never got a