Rex Stout - Murder by the Book

I went left, rounded a corner to the right, continued, turned right again, andin ten paces was at Room 728. The door was wide open, and I stuck my head in to verify the number, 728, and to see the inscription:

RACHEL ABRAMS

Stenography and Typing

I stepped into a room about ten by twelve, not more, with a typewriter desk, a little table, a couple of chairs, a clothes rack, and an old green metal filing cabinet. A woman's hat and cloth coat hung on the rack, and an umbrella, and at the back of the typewriter desk was a vase of yellow daffodils. On the floor were some sheets of paper, scattered around. That was accounted for by the fact that the one window was raised, way up, and a strong draft was whirling through.

Something else was coming through too: voices from down in the street that were shouts. Three steps took me to the window, and I looked out and down. People had stopped in the drizzle and were gawking. Three men, from different directions, were running across the street toward the building, and on this side a group was forming on the sidewalk. In the center of the group two men were bending over a figure of a woman prostrate on the sidewalk, with her skirt up, showing her bare legs, and her head twisted sideways. I have good eyes, but from

seven floors up, in the dim light of the drizzle blown by the wind, things were blurred. Most of the group were looking at the huddled figure, but some were gazing straight up at me. Off to the left a hundred feet, a cop was trotting toward the group.

I assert that it took me not more than three seconds to realize what had happened. I assert it not to get a credit mark, since I can't prove it, but to account for what I did. Of course it was only a hunch, but I had never had one that felt like a better bet. Wolfe had told me to get him something, and I had missed getting it by three minutes or maybe only two. I was so sure of it that what I did was automatic. Pulling back from the window and straightening, I darted a glance at the desk and one at the filing cabinet. I started with the desk only because it was nearer.

That was probably the briefest search on record, or close to it. The shallow middle drawer was eliminated with one look. The top left drawer held paper and carbons and envelopes. The one below it had three compartments, with miscellaneous contents, and in the middle one was a notebook bound in brown imitation leather. At the top of the first page was writen the word "Receipts," and the first entry was dated Aug. 7, 1944.1 flipped the pages to 1950, began with July, ran my eye over the items, and there it was: "Sept. 12, Baird Archer, $60.00 dep." Six lines down another entry said: "Sept. 23, Baird Archer, $38.40 in full."

"Of all the goddam lousy luck," I said with feeling and, slipping the notebook in my pocket, made for the door. There was a bare chance that Rachel Abrams had enough life left in her to talk a little. As I rounded the second turn in the hall an elevator door opened and a flatfoot emerged. I was so engrossed that I didn't even glance at him, which was a mistake because cops can't bear not to be glanced at, especially when they're on something hot. He stopped in my path and demanded, "Who are you?"

"Governor Dewey," I told him. "How do you like me without the mustache?"

"Oh, a wag. Show me some identification."

I raised the brows. "How did I get behind the Iron Curtain without knowing it?"

"I'm' in a hurry. What's your name?"

I shook my head. "Honest, officer, I don't like this. Take me to the nearest Kremlin and I'll tell the sergeant." I stepped and pushed the down button.

"Aw, nuts." He tramped down the hall.

An elevator stopped and I entered. The elevator man was telling his passengers about the excitement. The street lobby was deserted. Out on the sidewalk the crowd was thick now, ignoring the drizzle, and I had to get authoritative to elbow my way through to the front. A cop was there, commanding them to stand back. I had a line ready to hand him to get me an approach, but when I got close enough for an unobstructed view I saw I wouldn't need it. She was smashed good, and there would be no more talking from a head that had taken that angle to the shoulders. Nor did I have to ask her name, since I had heard everybody telling everybody else, Rachel Abrams, as I pushed my way through the mob. I pushed my way out again, went to the corner and grabbed a taxi, and gave the driver the number on West Thirty-fifth Street.

When I mounted the stoop and let myself in with my key it was five minutes past four, so Wolfe had gone up for his afternoon conference with the orchids. Hanging my hat and topcoat in the hall, I ascended the three flights to the plant rooms on the roof. For all the thousands of times I have seen that display of show-offs, they still take my eye and slow me down whenever I go through, but that day I didn't even know they were there, not even in the warm room, though the Phalaenopsis were in top bloom and the Cattleyas were splashing color all around.

Wolfe was in the potting room with Theodore, transferring young Dendrobium chrysotoxums from fours to fives. As I approached he snapped at me, "Can't it wait?"

"I suppose so," I conceded. "She's dead. I just want permission to phone Cramer. I might as well, since I was seen by the elevator man who let me off at her floor, and a cop, and my fingerprints are on her desk."

"Who is dead?"

"The woman who typed that manuscript for Baird Archer."

"When and how?"

"Just now. She died while I was in the elevator going up to her office on the seventh floor. She was going down faster, out of her window. What killed her was hitting the sidewalk."

"How do you know she typed the manuscript?"

"I found this in her desk." I took the notebook from my pocket and showed him the entries. His hands were too dirty to touch it, and I held it before his eyes, I asked him, "Do you want details now?"

"Confound it. Yes."

As I reported in full he stood with the tips of his dfftf fingers resting on the potting bench, his head turned to me, his lips tight, his brow creased with a frown. His yellow smock, some half an acre in area, was exactly the color of the daffodils on Rachel Abrams' desk.

When I had finished the story I inquired grimly, "Shall I expound?"

He grunted.

"I should have stuck around, but it wouldn't have done any good because I was too goddam mad to function. If I had been three minutes earlier I would have had her alive. Also, if she was pushed out of the window I would have had the pusher alive, and you told me to get you something, and it would have been a pleasure to get you that. The lucky bastard. He must have entered a down elevator, or passed down the hall on his way to the stairs, not more than thirty seconds before I stepped out on that floor. When I looked out of the window he was probably there on the sidewalk, walking away because he wasn't morbid."

Wolfe's eyes opened and half shut again.

"If you're thinking," I said aggressively, "that she wasn't pushed, one will get you ten. I do not believe that the woman who typed that manuscript picked today to jump out of the window or to fall out by accident."

"Nevertheless, it's possible."

"I deny it. It would be too goddam silly. Okay, you said to get you something, and at least I got you this." I tapped the notebook with a finger.