Rex Stout - The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

I decided to take the subway instead of a taxi, not to save the client money, but because I thought it was about time to do something about tails. There had been two days and nights since the FBI had presumably got interested in us, and twenty-five hours since they had asked Perazzo to take our licenses, and I still had seen no sign that I had company. Of course I had dodged or hadn't looked. I now decided to look, but not while walking. I waited until I was at the Grand Central subway station and had boarded an uptown express.

If you think you have a tail on a subway train and want to spot him you keep moving while the train is under way, and at each station you stand close enough to a door so that you might get off. At a rush hour it's difficult, but it was ten-thirty in the morning and we were going uptown. I had him by the time we made the third stop-or rather, them. There were two. One was a chunky specimen, barely tall enough to meet the specifications, with big brown eyes that he didn't know how to handle, and the other was the Gregory Peck type except for his curly little ears. The game, just for the hell of it, was to spot them without their knowing I had, and when I got off at the 70th Street station I was pretty sure I had won it. Out on the sidewalk again, I ignored them.

Tailing on New York streets, if you know you have it and want to shake it and aren't a birdbrain, is a joke. There are a thousand dodges, and the tailee merely picks the one that fits the time and place. There on Tremont Avenue I moseyed along, glancing occasionally at my wristwatch and at the numbers on doors, until I saw an empty taxi coming. When it was thirty yards away I scooted between parked cars, flagged it, hopped in, told the hackie as I pulled the door shut, "Step on it," and saw Gregory Peck stare at me as we went by. The other one was across the street. We did seven blocks before a red light stopped us, so that was that. I admit I had kept an eye on the rear. I gave the driver the Grand Concourse address, and the light changed, and we rolled.

Some realty agency branch offices are upstairs, but that one was on the ground floor of an apartment building, of course one of the buildings it serviced. I entered. It was small, two desks and a table and a filing cabinet. A beautiful young lady with enough black hair for a Beatle was at the nearest desk, and when she smiled at me and asked if she could help me, I had to take a breath to keep my head from swimming. They should stay home during business hours. I told her I would like to see Mr Odell, and she turned her beautiful head and nodded to the rear.

He was at the other desk. I had waited to see him before deciding on the approach, and one look was enough. Some men, after a hitch in the jug, even a short one, have got a permanent wilt, but not him. In size he was a peanut, but an elegant peanut. Fair-skinned and fair-haired, he was more than fair-dressed. His pin-stripe gray suit had set him, or somebody, back at least two Cs.

He left his chair to come, said he was Frank Odell, and offered a hand. It would have been simpler if he had had a room to himself; possibly she didn't know she was cooped up with a jailbird. I said I was Archie Goodwin, got out my case, and handed him a card. He gave it a good look, stuck it in his pocket, and said, "My goodness, I should have recognized you. From your picture in the paper."

My picture hadn't been in the paper for fourteen months, and he had been behind bars, but I didn't make an issue of it. "I'm beginning to show my years," I told him. "Can you give me a few minutes? Nero Wolfe has taken on a little job involving a man named Morris Althaus and he thinks you might be able to furnish some information."

He didn't bat an eye. No wilt. He merely said, "That's the man that was murdered."

"Right. Of course the police have been around about that. Routine. This is just a private investigation on a side issue."

"If you mean the police have been here, they haven't. We might as well sit down." He moved to his desk, and I followed and took a chair at its end. "What's the side issue?" he asked.

"It's a little complicated. It's about some research he was doing at the time he was killed. You may know something about it if you saw him during that period-say the month of November, last November. Did you see him around then?"

"No, the last time I saw him was two years ago. In a courtroom. When some people that I thought were friends of mine were making me the goat. Why would the police be seeing me?"

"Oh, in a murder case they can't crack they see everybody." I waved it away. "What you say about being made the goat, that's interesting. It might have some bearing on what we want to know, whether Althaus was in the habit of doctoring his stuff. Was he one of the friends who made you the goat?"

"My goodness, no. He wasn't a friend. I only met him twice, while he was doing that piece, or getting ready to. He was looking for bigger fish. I was just a hustler, working for Bruner Realty."

"Bruner Realty?" I wrinkled my brow. "I don't remember that name in connection with the case. Of course I'm not any too familiar with it. Then it was your friends in Bruner Realty who made you the goat?"

He smiled. "You certainly are not familiar with it. It was some outside deals that I had a hand in. That all came out at the trial. The Bruner people were very nice about it, very nice. The vice-president even arranged for me to see Mrs Bruner herself. That was the second time I saw Althaus, in her office at her house. She was nice too. She believed what I told her. She even paid my lawyer, part of it. You see, she realized that I had got mixed up in a shady deal, but I explained to her that I hadn't known what I was getting into, and she didn't want a man who was working for her company to get a bum deal. I call that nice."

"So do I. I'm surprised you didn't go back to Bruner Realty when you got-when you could."

"They didn't want me.

"That wasn't very nice, was it?"

"Well, it's the philosophy of it. After all, I had been convicted. The president of the company is a pretty tough man. I could have gone to Mrs Bruner, but I have a certain amount of pride, and I heard about this opening with Driscoll." He smiled. "I'm not licked, far from it. There's plenty of opportunity in this business, and I'm still young." He opened a drawer. "You gave me a card, I'll give you one."

He gave me about a dozen, not one, and some information about the Driscoll Renting Agency. They had nine offices in three boroughs and handled over a hundred buildings, and they gave the finest service in the metropolitan area. I received a strong impression that Driscoll was nice. I listened to enough of it to be polite, and thanked him, and on the way out I took the liberty of exchanging glances with the beautiful young lady, and she smiled at me. That was certainly a nice place.

I strolled down the Grand Concourse in the winter sunshine, cooling off; I hadn't been invited to remove my coat. I was listing the items of the coincidence:

1. Mrs Bruner had distributed copies of that book.

2. Morris Althaus had been collecting material for a piece on the FBI.

3. G-men had killed Althaus, or at least had been in his apartment about the time he was killed.

4. Althaus had met Mrs Bruner. He had been in her house.

5. A man who had worked for Mrs Bruner's firm had been jailed (made the goat?) as a result of a piece Althaus had written.