Rex Stout - Too Many Women

He saw me, stopped short, and demanded, “What do you want?” “Well, sir,” I said pleadingly, “I thought with my experience if you had a vacancy anywhere, I’d be willing to start as a patrolman and work my way-” “Natural-born clown,” he said personally. “Is it the Meredith case? Has Wolfe crashed the gate-” “No, sir, Mr. Wolfe would regard that as impertinent. As he was saying only yesterday, if ever Mr. Cramer-” He was on his way. I looked reproachfully at his broad manly back and then headed for the street.

CHAPTER Five

Seated at my desk in the office, I put the phone back in the cradle and told Nero Wolfe, “The bank says that Naylor-Kerr is good for anything up to twenty million.” Wolfe, seated behind his own desk, heaved a sigh and then was silent. I had given him the story complete, in a dry factual manner with no flavor or coloring on account of the coolness previously mentioned. His inclination, naturally, was to turn it down, since he was always annoyed at any hint of a prospect that he might have to use his brain, but I doubted if I would have to ride him hard on this because it looked like easy money and we could always use it.

He sighed again.

I spoke, still dry. “I suppose the best bet is that Pine killed Waldo Wilmot Moore himself and is keeping up appearances. What for being unknown to us, but surely not to everybody. Anyway, we would be paid by the corporation, not him.

His suggestion that you get a job in the stock department under another name shows that he has given the problem a great deal of thought. You could call yourself Clarence Camembert, for instance, or Percy Pickerel. If they gave you too much to do you could bring things home and I’d be glad to help. They could pay you by weight-say, a dollar a pound a week. As you stand now, or at least sit, close to three hundred and forty pounds, it would come to an annual salary-” “Archie. Your notebook.” “Yes, sir.” I got it and flipped to a new page.

“A letter to Mr. Pine, president and so on. Mr. Goodwin has reported his conversation this morning with you. I accept the job of investigating, on behalf of your company, the death of your former employee, Waldo Wilmot Moore. It is understood that the purpose of the investigation is to establish, with satisfactory evidence, the manner of his death-whether by accident or by the deliberate action, with intent, of some person or persons. The job does not, as I understand it, extend to the disclosure of the identity of the murderer-if there was a murder-nor to procurement of proof of guilt. Should such extension be desired, you may notify me. Paragraph.

“The procedure promising quickest results, I think, will be for you to put Mr.

Goodwin on the company payroll as a personnel expert. You can plausibly explain his presence as a part of your campaign to reduce your employee turnover. Thus he can spend his days there, moving freely about and conversing with anyone whomever, without causing comment or increasing the gossip you deplore. I suggest that you make his salary two hundred dollars weekly. Paragraph.

“My fee will of course be determined by the amount of time spent on the case and the amount and kind of work required. No guarantee is given. No retainer is necessary unless you prefer it that way, in which case the check should be for two thousand dollars. Sincerely.” Wolfe, who always straightened up to some extent to dictate, leaned back again.

“After lunch you can go down and give that to him.” If I had been cool before I was a glacier now. “Why lunch?” I demanded. “Why should I eat?” “Why not?” His eyes went open. “What’s the matter?” “Nothing. Not a thing. But what I start I like to finish, and this may take weeks. There are one or two other little matters that need attention around here, and there’s a bare possibility that you may find it slightly inconvenient when you buzz me or call me or grunt at me, as you do on an average of ten times an hour, and I’m not here. Or, perhaps, that hadn’t occurred to me, perhaps you’re figuring on a replacement?” “Archie,” he murmured. His murmur is Wolfe at his worst. “I agree with someone, I forget who, that no man is indispensable. By the way, you may have noticed that I suggested the same salary as you receive from me. You can either endorse their checks over to me for deposit in my bank, and take my checks weekly as usual, or just keep their checks as your pay, whichever is simpler for your bookkeeping.” “Thank you very much.” I made no attempt to speak further. His deliberate use of the plural, checks, instead of check, three times, therefore got exactly the effect he intended it to. I got out paper and carbon and inserted them, and started on the typewriter in a way that left no possible doubt whether it was noiseless or not.

Coolness.

CHAPTER Six

I started work as a personnel expert for Naylor-Kerr, Inc., the next day, Wednesday morning, March 19, the next to last day of winter.

I knew just what I had known after my first call on Pine, and no more. Tuesday afternoon, when I took him Wolfe’s letter, he was co-operative about letting me ask questions, but he couldn’t supply many answers. He liked Wolfe’s idea on procedure, and proved he was a good executive by starting immediately to execute. That was simple. All he had to do was call in an assistant vice-president, introduce me, tell him about me, and instruct him to put me on the payroll and present me personally to all heads of departments. That was accomplished Tuesday afternoon, the presentations being made in the office of the assistant vice-president, to which the department heads were summoned. I found an opportunity to drop the remark that after looking over the reports and records I thought I would start in the stock department.

Wednesday morning I was on the job in the stock department on the thirty-fourth floor. It handed me a surprise. I had vaguely supposed it to be something on the order of an overgrown hardware store, with rows of shelves to the ceiling containing samples of things that hold bridges together and related objects, but not at all. Primarily, as far as space went, it was a room about the size of the Yankee Stadium, with hundreds of desks and girls at them. Along each side of that arena, the entire length, was a series of partitioned offices, with some of the doors closed and some open. No stock of anything was in sight anywhere.

One good glance and I liked the job. The girls. All right there, all being paid to stay right there, and me being paid to move freely about and converse with anyone whomever, which was down in black and white. Probably after I had been there a couple of years I would find that close-ups revealed inferior individual specimens, Grade B or lower in age, contours, skin quality, voice, or level of intellect, but from where I stood at nine-fifty-two Wednesday morning it was enough to take your breath away. At least half a thousand of them, and the general and overwhelming impression was of-clean, young, healthy, friendly, spirited, beautiful, and ready. I stood and filled my eyes, trying to look detached. It was an ocean of opportunity.

A voice at my elbow said, “I doubt very much if there’s a virgin in the room.

Now if you’ll come to my office…” It was Kerr Naylor, the head of the stock department. I had reported to him on arrival, as arranged, and he had introduced me to a dozen or so of his assistants, heads of sections. All but two of them were men. One of them I had regarded with special interest was the head of the Correspondence Checking Section, since Waldo Wilmot Moore had been a correspondence checker, but I was careful not to give him any extra time or attention there at the start. His name was Dickerson, he could easily have been my grandfather, and his eyes watered. I gathered from our brief talk that the function of a correspondence checker was to mosey around, pounce and grab a letter when the whim seized him, take it to the checkers’ office, and give it the works on content, tone, policy, style, and mechanical execution. So it could safely be assumed that his popularity quotient around the place would be about the same as that of an MP in the army, and that was bad. It presented the possibility that any letter-dictator or stenographer in the department might have felt like murdering Moore, including those who had lost their jobs-and the turnover had been twenty-eight per cent. For one man to sort out the whole haystack, a straw at a time, was not my idea of the pursuit of happiness, but it did have its good points as suggested above.