Rex Stout - Too Many Cooks

“Archie. Those two colored men on duty in the main foyer of Pocahontas Pavilion last evening. Find out where they are.

I went to the phone in my room, deciding that the quickest way was to get hold of my friend Odell and let him do it. In less than ten minutes I was back again with the report.

“They went on at Pocahontas again at six o’clock. The same two. It is now 6:07. Their names-”

“No, thanks. I don’t need the names.” Wolfe pulled himself up and looked at me. “We have an enemy who has sealed himself in. He fancies himself impregnable, and he well may be-no door, no gate, no window in his walls-or hers. Possibly hers. But there is one little crack, and we’ll have to see if we can pry it open.” He sighed. “Amazing what a wall that is; that one crack is all I see. If that fails us…” He shrugged. Then he said bitterly, “As you know, we are dressing for dinner this evening. I would like to get to the pavilion as quickly as possible. What the tongue has promised the body must submit to.”

He began operations for leaving his chair.

7

IT WAS STILL twenty minutes short of seven o’clock when we got to Pocahontas. Wolfe had done pretty well with the black and white, considering that Fritz Brenner was nearly a thousand miles away, and I could have hired out as a window dummy.

Naturally I had some curiosity about Wolfe’s interest in the greenjackets, but it didn’t get satisfied. In the main hall, after we had been relieved of our hats, he motioned me on in to the parlor, and he stayed behind. I noted that Odell’s information was correct; the two colored men were the same that had been on duty the evening before.

It was more than an hour until dinnertime, and there was no one in the large parlor except Mamma Mondor, knitting and sipping sherry, and Vallenko and Keith, with Lisette Putti between them, chewing the rag on a divan. I said hello and strolled over and tried to ask Mamma Mondor what was the French word for knitting, but she seemed dumb at signs and began to get excited, and it looked as if it might end in a fight, so I shoved off.

Wolfe entered from the hall, and I saw by the look in his eye that he hadn’t lost the crack he had mentioned. He offered greetings around, made a couple of inquiries, and was informed that Louis Servan was in the kitchen overlooking the preparations for dinner. Then he came up to me and in a low tone outlined briefly an urgent errand. I thought he had a nerve to wait until I got my glad rags on to ask me to work up a sweat, particularly since no fee was involved, but I went for my hat without stopping to grumble.

I cut across the lawn to get to the main path and headed for the hotel. On the way I decided to use Odell again instead of trying to develop new contacts, and luckily I ran across him in the corridor by the elevators and without having to make inquiries. He looked at me pleased and expectant.

“Did you tell Wolfe? Has he seen Liggett?”

“Nope, not yet. Give us time, can’t you? Don’t you worry, old boy. Right now I need some things in a hurry. I need a good ink pad, preferably a new one, and fifty or sixty sheets of smooth white paper, preferably glazed, and a magnifying glass.”

“Jumping Jesus.” He stared at me. “Who you working for, J. Edgar Hoover?”

“No. It’s all right, we’re having a party. Maybe Liggett will be there. Step on it, huh?”

He told me to wait there and disappeared around the corner. In five minutes he was back, with all three items. As I took them he told me:

“I’ll have to put the pad and paper on the bill. The glass is a personal loan, don’t forget and skip with it.”

I told him okay, thanked him, and beat it. On the way back I took the path which would carry me past Upshur, and I made a stop there and sought suite 60. I got a bottle of talcum powder from my bathroom and stuck it in my pocket, and my pen and a notebook, then found the copy of the Journal of Criminology I had brought along and thumbed through it to some plates illustrating new classifications of fingerprints. I cut one of the pages out of the magazine with my knife, rolled it up in the paper Odell had given me, and trotted out again and across to Pocahontas. All the time I was trying to guess at the nature of the crack Wolfe thought he was going to pry open with that array of materials.

I got no light on that point from Wolfe. He had apparently been busy, for though I hadn’t been gone more than fifteen minutes I found him established in the biggest chair in the small parlor, alongside the same table behind which Tolman had been barricaded against the onslaught of Constanza Berin. Across the table from him, looking skeptical but resigned, was Sergei Vallenko.

Wolfe finished a sentence to Vallenko and then turned to me. “You have everything, Archie? Good. The pad and paper here on the table, please. I’ve explained to Mr. Servan that if I undertake this inquiry I shall have to ask a few questions of everyone and take fingerprint samples. He has sent Mr. Vallenko to us first. All ten prints, please.”

That was a hot one. Nero Wolfe collecting fingerprints, especially after the cops had smeared all over the dining-room and it had been reopened to the public! I knew darned well it was phoney, but hadn’t guessed his charade yet, so once again I had to follow his tail light without knowing the road. I got Vallenko’s specimens, on two sheets, and labelled them, and Wolfe dismissed him with thanks.

I demanded, when we were alone, “What has this identification bureau-”

“Not now, Archie. Sprinkle powder on Mr. Vallenko’s prints.”

I stared at him. “In the name of God, why? You don’t put powder-”

“It will look more professional and mysterious. Do it. Give me the page from the magazine.-Good. Satisfactory. We’ll use only the upper half; cut it off and keep it in your pocket. Put the magnifying glass on the table-ah, Mme. Mondor? Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plait.”

She had her knitting along. He asked her some questions of which I never bothered him for a translation, and then turned her over to my department and I put her on record. I never felt sillier in my life than dusting that talcum powder on those fresh clear specimens. Our third customer was Lisette Putti, and she was followed by Keith, Blanc, Rossi, Mondor… Wolfe asked a few questions of all of them, but knowing his voice and manner as well as I did, it sounded to me as if his part of it was as phoney as mine. And it certainly didn’t sound as if he was prying any crack open.

Then Lawrence Coyne’s Chinese wife came in. She was dressed for dinner in red silk, with a sprig of mountain laurel in her black hair, and with her slim figure and little face and narrow eyes she looked like an ad for a Round the World cruise. At once I got a hint that it was her we were laying for, for Wolfe told me sharply to take my notebook, which he hadn’t done for any of the others, but all he did was ask her the same line of questions and explain about the prints before I took them. However, there appeared to be more to come. As I gave her my handkerchief, already ruined, to wipe the tips of her fingers on, Wolfe settled back.

He murmured, “By the way, Mrs. Coyne, Mr. Tolman tells me that while you were outdoors last evening you saw no one but one of the attendants on one of the paths. You asked him about a bird you heard and he told you it was a whippoorwill. You had never heard a whippoorwill before?”