Rex Stout - A Family Affair

We looked. Philip looked back at Felix and unglued his mouth to say, "I told you I was lying. I admitted it."

"You did not. That's another lie."

Philip looked at Wolfe. "I told him I was leaving something out because I couldn't remember. Isn't that admitting it, Mr. Wolfe?"

"It's a nice point," Wolfe said. "It deserves discussion, but I think not here and now. You were leaving out something that Pierre had done or said?"

"Yes, sir. I admitted I couldn't remember it."

Wolfe grunted. "This afternoon I asked you to try to recall everything he said yesterday, and you said you would but you couldn't do it at the restaurant. Now you admit there was something you can't remember?"

"It wasn't that, Mr. Wolfe. It wasn't what he said yesterday."

"Nonsense. A rigmarole. You're wriggling. Do you want me to form the conjecture that you killed him? Do you or don't you want the murderer exposed and punished? Do you or don't you know something that might help to identify him? You said you wept when you learned he was dead. Did you indeed?"

Philip's mouth was closed, clamped again. His eyes closed. He shook his head several times, slow. He opened his eyes, turned his head to look at Felix, turned it back and on around to look at me, and back again to Wolfe, and spoke. "I want to talk to you alone, Mr. Wolfe."

Wolfe turned to Felix. "The front room, Felix. As you know, it's soundproofed."

"But I want-" "Confound it, it's past midnight. I'll tell you later, or I won't. Certainly he won't, I'm spent, and so are you."

I got up and crossed to open the door to the front room, and Felix came. I stuck my head in to see that the door to the hall was closed, shut that one, and returned to my desk. As I sat, Philip said, "I said alone, Mr. Wolfe. Just you."

"No. If Mr. Goodwin leaves and you tell me any- thing that suggests action, I'll have the bother of repeating to him."

"Then I must-you must both promise not to tell Felix. Pierre was a proud man, Mr. Wolfe, I told you that. He was proud of his work and he didn't want to be just a good waiter, he wanted to be the best waiter. He wanted Mr. Vukcic to think he was the best waiter in the best restaurant in the world, and then he wanted Felix to think that. Maybe he does think that, and that's why you must promise not to tell him. He must not know that Pierre did something that no good waiter would ever do."

"We can't promise not to tell him. We can only promise not to tell him unless we must, unless it becomes impossible to find the murderer and expose him without telling Felix. I can promise that, and do. Archie?"

"Yes, sir," I said firmly. "I promise that. Cross my heart and hope to die. That's American, Philip, you may not know it. It means I would rather die than tell him."

"You have already told us," Wolfe said, "that he told you about getting orders mixed and serving them wrong, so that can't be it."

"No, sir. That was just yesterday. It was something much worse. Something he told me last week, Monday, a week ago yesterday. He told me a man had left a piece of paper on the tray with the money, and he had kept it, a piece of paper with something written on it. He told me he had kept it because the man had gone when he went to return it, and then he didn't give it to Felix to send it to him because what was written on it was a man's name and address and he knew the name and he wondered about it. He said he still had it, the piece of paper. So after you talked to me today, after you told me he said a man was going to kill him, I wondered if it could have been on account of that. I thought it might even have been the man whose name was on the paper. I knew it couldn't have been the man who had left the paper on the tray, because he was dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes, sir."

"How did you know he was dead?"

"It had been on the radio and in the paper. Pierre had told me it was Mr. Bassett who left the paper on the tray. We all knew about Mr. Bassett because he always paid in cash and he was a big tipper. Very big. Once he gave Felix a five-hundred-dollar bill."

I suppose I must have heard that, since I just wrote it, but if I was listening it was only with one ear. Millions of people knew about Harvey H. Bassett, president of NATELEC, National Electronics Industries, not because he was a big tipper but because he had been murdered just four days ago, last Friday night.

Wolfe hadn't batted an eye, but he cleared his throat and swallowed. "Yes," he said, "it certainly couldn't have been Mr. Bassett. But the man whose name was on the slip of paper-what was his name? Of course Pierre showed it to you."

"No, sir, he didn't."

"At least he told you, he must have. You said he knew the name and wondered about it. So unquestionably he told you what it was. And you will tell me."

"No, sir, I can't. I don't know."

Wolfe's head turned to me. "Go and tell Felix he may as well leave. Tell him we may be engaged with Philip all night."

I left my chair, but so did Philip. "No, you won't," he said, and he meant it. "I'm going home. This has been the worst day of my whole life, and I'm fifty-four years old. First Pierre dead, and then all day knowing I ought to tell this, first Felix and then you and then the police, and wondering if Archie Good-win killed him. Now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have told you, maybe I should have told the police, but then I think how you were with Mr, Vukcic and when he died. And I know how he was about you. But I've told you everything- everything. I can't tell you any more."

He headed for the door.

I looked at Wolfe, but he shook his head, so I merely went to the hall and the front, no hurry. Probably Philip wouldn't let me help him on with his coat-but he did. No good nights. I opened the door, closed it after him, returned to the office, and asked Wolfe, "Do you want Felix?"

"No."

He was on his feet. "Of course he can tell us about Bassett, but I'm played out, and so are you. One question: Does Philip know the name on that paper?"

"One will get you ten, no. He told me to my face that I may be a murderer and called me Archie Good-win. He was unloading."

"Confound it. Tell Felix he'll hear from me tomorrow. Today. Good night."

He moved.

The dinner paid for by Harvey H. Bassett in an upstairs room at Rusterman's Friday evening, October, had been stag. The guests: Albert. Judd, lawyer Francis Ackerman, lawyer Roman Vilar, Vilar Associates, industrial security Ernest Urquhart, lobbyist Willard K. Hahn, banker Benjamin Igoe, electronics engineer Putting that here, I'm way ahead of myself and of you, but I don't like making lists and I wanted to get it down. Also, when I typed it that Wednesday to put on Wolfe's desk, I looked it over to decide if one of them was a murderer and if so which one, and you may want to play that game too. Not that it had to be one of them. The fact that they had been present when Bassett left the slip of paper among the bills on the tray didn't make them any better candidates than anyone else for who could have been with him in a stolen automobile on West Ninety-third Street around midnight a week later with a gun in his hand, but we had to start somewhere, and at least they had known him. Possibly one of them had given him the slip of paper.