Rex Stout - Triple Jeopardy

I was pulling chairs around so the Vardas family would be facing him, but stopped to give him an eye.

"Us?" I inquired.

"Yes."

"Okay," I said courteously, "if that's how it is. I did not invite them to come here, let alone to lunch. They came on their own, and I let them in, which is one of my functions. Having started it, I'll finish it. May I use the front room, please? I'll have them out of here in ten minutes."

"Pfui." He was supercilious. "I am now responsible for their presence, since they were my guests at lunch. Sit down, sir. Sit down, Mrs. Vardas, please."

Carl and Tina didn't know what from which. I had to push the chairs up behind their knees. Then I went to my own chair and swiveled to face Wolfe.

"I have a question to ask them," I told him, "but first you need a couple of facts. They're in this country without papers. They were in a concentration camp in Russia and they're not telling how they got here if they can help it. They could be spies, but I doubt it after hearing them talk. Naturally they jump a mile if they hear someone say boo, and when a man came to the barber shop this morning and showed a police card and asked who they were and where they came from and what they were doing last night they scooted the first chance they got. But they didn't know where to go so they came here to buy fifty bucks' worth of advice and information. I got bighearted and went to the shop disguised as a Boy Scout."

"You went?" Tina gasped.

I turned to them. "Sure I went. It's a complicated situation, and you made it worse by beating it, but you did and 80

here we are. I think I can handle it if you two can be kept out of the way. It would be dangerous for you to stay here. I know a safe place up in the Bronx for you to lay low for a few days. You shouldn't take a chance on a taxi or the subway, so we'll go around the comer to the garage and get Mr. Wolfe's car, and you can drive it up there. Then I'll--"

"Excuse me," Carl said urgently. "You would drive us up there?"

"No, I'll be busy. Then I'll-"

"But I can't drive a car! I don't know how!"

"Then your wife will drive. You can leave--"

"She can't! She don't know either!"

I sprang from my chair and stood over them. "Look," I said savagely, "save that for the cops. Can't drive a car? Certainly you can! Everybody can!"

They were looking up at me, Carl bewildered, Tina frowning. "In America, yes," she said. "But we are not Americans, not yet. We have never had a chance to learn."

"You have never driven a car?"

"No. Never."

"And Carl?"

"Never."

"What the devil is this?" Wolfe demanded.

I returned to my chair. "That," I said, "was the question I wanted to ask. It has a bearing, as you'll soon see." I regarded Carl and Tina. "If you're lying about this, not knowing how to drive a car, you won't be sent back home to die, you'll die right here. It will be a cinch to find out if you're lying."

"Why should we?" Carl demanded. "What is so important in it?"

"Once more," I insisted. "Can you drive a car?"

"No."

"Can you, Tina?"

"No!"

"Okay." I turned to Wolfe. "The caller at the barber shop this morning was a precinct dick named Wallen. Fickler took him to Tina's booth, and he questioned Tina first. Then the others had sessions with him in the booth, in this order:

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Philip, Carl, Jimmie, Tom, Ed, and Janet. You may not know that the manicure booths are around behind the long partition. After Janet came out there was a period of ten or fifteen minutes when Wallen was in the booth alone. Then Fickler went to see, and what he saw was Wallen's body with scissors buried in his back. Someone had stabbed him to death. Since Carl and Tina had lammed�"

Tina's cry was more of a gasp, a last gasp, an awful sound. With one leap she was out of her chair and at Carl, grasping him and begging wildly, "Carl, no! No, no! Oh, Carl�"

"Make her stop," Wolfe snapped.

I had to try, because Wolfe would rather be in a room with a hungry tiger than with a woman out of hand. I went and got a grip on her shoulder but released it at sight of the expression on Carl's face as he pushed to his feet against her pressure. It looked as if he could and would handle it. He did. He straightened her up, standing against her, his face nearly touching hers, and told her, "No! Do you understand? No!"

He eased her back to her chair and down onto it, and turned to me. "That man was killed there in Tina's booth?"

"Yes."

Carl smiled as he had once before, and I wished he would stop trying it. "Then of course," he said as if he were conceding a point in a tight argument, "this is the end for us. But please I must ask you not to blame my wife. Because we have been through many things together she is ready to credit me with many deeds that are far beyond me. She has a big idea of me, and I have a big idea of her. But I did not kill that man. I did not touch him." He frowned. "I don't understand why you suggested riding in a car to the Bronx. Of course you will give us to the police."

"Forget the Bronx." I was frowning back. "Every cop in town has his eye peeled for you. Sit down."

He stood. He looked at Tina, at Wolfe, and back down at me.

"Sit down, damn it!"

He went to his chair and sat. 82

"About driving a car," Wolfe muttered. "Was that flummery?"

"No, sir, that comes next. Last night around midnight a hit-and-run driver in a stolen car killed two women up on Broadway. The car was found parked at Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street. Wallen, from the Twentieth Precinct, was the first dick to look it over. In it he apparently found something that led him to the Goldenrod Barber Shop--anyhow he phoned his wife that he was on a hot one that would lead to glory and a raise and then he showed up at the shop and called the roll, as described. With the result also as described. Cramer has bought it that the hit-and-run driver found himself cornered and used the scissors, and Cramer, don't quote me, is not a dope. To qualify as a hitandrun driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to drive a car. So the best plan would be for Carl and Tina to go back to the shop and report for duty and for the official quiz, if it wasn't for two things. First, the fact that they lammed will make it very tough, and second, even though it is settled that they didn't kill a cop, their lack of documents will fix them anyhow."

I waved a hand. "So actually what's the difference? If they're sent back where they came from they're doomed there, that's all they have to pick from. One interesting angle is that you are harboring fugitives from justice, and I am not. I told Purley they're here. So you're--"

"You what?" Wolfe bellowed.

"What I said. That's the advantage of having a reputation for gags, you can say practically anything if you handle your face right. I told him they were here in our front room, and he sailed right over it. So I'm clean, but you're not. You can't even just show them out. If you don't want to call Cramer yourself, which I admit would be a little thick since they were your luncheon guests, I could get Purley at the shop and tell him they're still here and why hasn't he sent for them."

"It might be better," Tina said, not with hope, "just a little better, if you would let us go ourselves? No?"

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She got no answer. Wolfe was glaring at me. It wasn't that he needed my description of the situation to realize what a pickle he was in; I have never tried to deny that the interior decorator did a snappier job inside his skull than in mine. What had him boiling was my little stunt of getting it down that neither Carl nor Tina could drive a car. But for that it would still have been possible to let them meet the law and take what they got, and more or less shrug it off; now that was out of the question. Also, naturally, he resented my putting the burden on him. If I had taken a stand as a champion of humanity he could have blamed me for any trouble he was put to�and didn't I know he would.