Rex Stout - Red Box, The

“Okay. I'll have something thought up to tell you.”

I followed the sergeant out to the corridor and down it to the elevator. We stayed in for a flight below the ground floor, and he led me the length of a dim hall and around a corner, and finally stopped at a door which may have had a figure 5 on it but if so I couldn't see it. He opened the door and we went in and he closed the door again. He crossed to where a guy sat on a chair mopping his neck with a handkerchief, said something to him, and turned and went out again.

It was a medium-sized room, nearly bare. A few plain wooden chairs were along one wall. A bigger one with arms was near the middle of the room, and Perren

Gebert was sitting in it, with a light flooding his face from a floor lamp with a big reflector in front of him. Standing closer in front of him was a wiry-looking man in his shirt sleeves with little fox ears and a Yonkers haircut. The guy on the chair that the sergeant had spoken to was in his shirt sleeves too, and so was Gebert. When I got close enough to the light so that

Gebert could see me and recognize me, he half started up, and said in a funny hoarse tone:

“Goodwin! Ah, Goodwin-”

The wiry cop reached out and slapped him a good one on the left side of his neck, and then with his other hand on his right ear. Gebert quivered and sank back. “Sit down there, will you?” the cop said plaintively. The other cop, still holding his handkerchief in his hand, got up and walked over to me:

“Goodwin? My name's Sturgis. Who are you from, Buzzy's squad?”

I shook my head. “Private agency. We're on the case and we're supposed to be hot.”

“Oh. Private, huh? Well…the inspector sent you down. You want a job?”

“Not just this minute. You gentlemen go ahead. I'll listen and see if I can think of something.”

I stepped a pace closer to Gebert and looked him over. He was reddened up a good deal and kind of blotchy, but I couldn't see any real marks. He had no necktie on and his shirt was torn on the shoulder and there was dried sweat on him. His eyes were bloodshot from blinking at the strong light and probably from having them slapped open when he closed them. I asked him:

“When you said my name just now, did you want to tell me something?”

He shook his head and made a hoarse grunt. I turned and told Sturgis: “He can't tell you anything if he can't talk. Maybe you ought to give him some water.”

Sturgis snorted. “He could talk if he wanted to. We gave him water when he passed out a couple of hours ago. There's only one thing in God's world wrong with him. He's contrary. You want to try him?”

“Later maybe.” I crossed to the row of chairs by the wall and sat down. Sturgis stood and thoughtfully wiped his neck. The wiry cop leaned forward to get closer to Gebert's face and asked him in a wounded tone:

“What did she pay you that money for?”

No response, no movement.

“What did she pay you that money for?”

Again, nothing.

“What did she pay you that money for?”

Gebert shook his head faintly. The cop roared at him in indignation, “Don't shake your head at me! Understand? What did she pay you that money for?”

Gebert sat still. The cop hauled off and gave him a couple more slaps, rocking his head, and then another pair.

“What did she pay you that money for?”

That went on for a while. It appeared to me doubtful that any progress was going to be made. I felt sorry for the poor dumb cops, seeing that they didn't have brains enough to realize that they were just gradually putting him to sleep and that in another three or four hours he wouldn't be worth fooling with. Of course he would be as good as new in the morning, but they couldn't go on with that for weeks, even if he was a foreigner and couldn't vote. That was the practical viewpoint, and though the ethics of it was none of my business, I admit I had my prejudices. I can bulldog a man myself, if he has it coming to him, but I prefer to do it on his home grounds, and I certainly don't want any help.

Apparently they had abandoned all the side issues which had been tried on him earlier in the day, and were concentrating on a few main points. After twenty minutes or more consumed on what she had paid him the money for, the wiry cop suddenly shifted to another one, what had he been after at Glennanne the night before. Gebert mumbled something to that, and got slapped for it. Then he made no reply to it and got slapped again. The cop was about on the mental level of a woodchuck; he had no variety, no change of pace, no nothing but a pair of palms and they must have been getting tender. He stuck to Glennanne for over half an hour, while I sat and smoked cigarettes and got more and more disgusted, then turned away and crossed to his colleague and muttered wearily:

“Take him a while, I'm going to the can.”

Sturgis asked me if I wanted to try, and I declined again with thanks. In fact,

I was about ready to leave, but thought I might as well get a brief line on

Sturgis' technique. He stuck his handkerchief in his hip pocket, walked over to

Gebert and exploded at him:

“What did she pay you that money for?”

I gritted my teeth to keep from throwing a chair at the sap. But he did show some variation; he was more of a pusher than a slapper. The gesture he worked most was to put his paw on Gebert's ear and administer a few short snappy shoves and then put his other paw on the other ear and even it up. Sometimes he took him full face and shoved straight back and then ended with a pat.

The wiry cop had come back and sat down beside me and was telling me how much bran he ate. I had decided I had had my money's worth and was taking a last puff on a cigarette, when the door opened and the sergeant entered-the one who had brought me down. He walked over and looked at Gebert the way a cook looks at a kettle to see if it has started to boil. Sturgis stepped back and pulled out his handkerchief and started to wipe. The sergeant turned to him:

“Orders from the inspector. Fix him up and brush him off and take him to the north door and wait there for me. The inspector wants him out of here in five minutes. Got a cup?”

Sturgis went and opened the door of a cupboard and came back with a white enamelled cup. The sergeant poured into it from a bottle and returned the bottle to his pocket. “Let him have that. Can he navigate all right?”

Sturgis said he could. The sergeant turned to me: “Will you go up to the inspector's office, Goodwin? I've got an errand on the main floor.”

He went on out and I followed him without saying anything. There was no one there I wanted to exchange telephone numbers with.

I took the elevator back upstairs. I had to wait quite a while in Cramer's anteroom. Apparently he was having a party in there, for three dicks came out, and a little later a captain in uniform, and still later a skinny guy with grey hair whom I recognized for Deputy Commissioner Alloway. Then I was allowed the gangway. Cramer was sitting there looking sour and chewing a cigar that had gone out.

“Sit down, son. You didn't get a chance to show us how downstairs. Huh? And we didn't show you much either. There was a good man working on Gebert for four hours this morning, a good clever man. He couldn't start a crack. So we gave up the cleverness and tried something else.”