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

When I got back to the room upstairs Wolfe was still in the armchair, with his fingers clasped at the peak of his middle mound. When I turned from shutting the door he growled, "Does she lie?"

I said certainly and went and sat.

"How the devil can you tell?"

"All right," I said, "to skip argument I'll concede that I am wise to attractive young women and you are not, since that's your line. But even you must know that she is not a big enough sap to give Mrs Bruner that guff about FBI men just because she thought she would like to hear it. I doubt if she's a sap at all. But she did tell Mrs Bruner that, so she had a reason, and not just some bull about how they walked. She had a real reason, God knows what. One guess out of a dozen: When she went in the house she heard noises, and went up another flight and listened at Althaus's door, and heard something they said. I don't like it, because if it was something like that why didn't she tell the cops? I prefer something she wouldn't want to spill. For instance, she knew Althaus was working on the FBI. He had-"

"How did she know?"

"Oh, it had progressed to intimacy. That's the easiest lie a woman can tell, they've been telling that one for ten thousand years. Very convenient, there in the same house, and he liked women and she is no hag. He had told her. He had even told her they might call on him uninvited when he wasn't home. So she-"

"She would have gone up to see if he was there."

"She did, after she saw the three men leaving, but the door was locked and she had no key, and her knock or ring wasn't answered. Anyway, I am only answering your question does she lie. She does."

"Then we need the truth. Get it."

That was par. He does not believe that I can take a girl to the Flamingo and dance a couple of hours and end up with all her deepest secrets, but he pretends he does because he thinks it makes me try harder.

"I'll consider it," I said. "I'll sleep on it-on the couch. May I change the subject? Last night you asked me if I could contrive any maneuver that would help to make Wragg believe that one of his men killed Althaus, and I said I couldn't. But I have. They have an open tail on Sarah Dacos, so they know she was here, and almost certainly they know you are. Also they know she lives at Sixty-three Arbor Street, and they do not know what she saw or heard that night. Therefore they don't know what she might have told you here tonight, but they'll assume it was something about that night. That should help."

"Possibly. Satisfactory."

"Yeah. But. If we take a taxi, now, to Cramer's home and spend an hour with him, they will absolutely assume that we have got something hot regarding his unsolved homicide, and that we got it from Sarah Dacos. That would help."

He shook his head. "You gave Mr Cramer our word of honor."

"Only about his seeing me and telling me. We go to him because in trying to dig up something on the FBI we got interested in Morris Althaus because he was working on them, and he was murdered, and Sarah Dacos tells us something about the murder that we think Cramer should know. Our word of honor is good as gold."

"What time is it?"

I looked. "Three minutes to ten."

"Mr Cramer would be in bed, and we have nothing for him."

"The hell we haven't. We have someone who had some reason for thinking they were G-men and is saving it. That will be pie for Cramer."

"No. It's our pie. We'll give Mr Cramer Miss Dacos only when we have her ourselves, if at all." He pushed his chair back. "Get it out of her. Tomorrow. I'm tired. We're going home and to bed."

10

At 10:35 Saturday morning I used a key on the door of 63 Arbor Street, ascended two flights of wooden stairs, used another key, and entered the apartment that had been Morris Althaus's.

I was following my own approach to the problem of getting it out of Sarah Dacos. I admit it was roundabout, especially in view of the fact that time was short, but it was a better stab at getting results than persuading her to go to the Flamingo for an evening of dancing. The fact that time was short had been made publicly evident by an item on the twenty-eighth page of the morning paper, which I had read at my breakfast table in the kitchen. It was headlined FINGERS CROSSED? and said:

The members of the Ten for Aristology, one of the most exclusive of New York's gourmet groups, evidently do not believe that history repeats itself. Lewis Hewitt, capitalist, socialite, orchid fancier, and aristologist, will entertain the group at dinner at his home at North Cove, Long Island, on Thursday evening, January 14. The menu will be chosen by Nero Wolfe, the well-known private investigator, and the food will be prepared by Fritz Brenner, Mr Wolfe's chef. Mr Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, his confidential assistant, will be present as guests.

That arrangement arouses memory of another occasion when Mr Brenner cooked a dinner for the Ten for Aristology, and Mr Wolfe and Mr Goodwin were guests, at the home of Benjamin Schriver, the shipping magnate. It occurred on April 1, 1958, and one of the Ten, Vincent Pyle, head of a Wall Street brokerage firm, was poisoned with arsenic in his portion of the first course, served to him by Carol Annis, who was subsequently convicted of first-degree murder.

Yesterday a Times reporter, remembering that former occasion, telephoned Mr Hewitt and asked him if any of the Ten for Aristology (aristology means science of dining) had shown any reluctance to attend the affair next Thursday, and Mr Hewitt said no. When the reporter asked him if he would keep his fingers crossed he said, "How can I? I couldn't handle my knife and fork."

It will certainly be an excellent meal.

Setting the date definitely, Thursday the fourteenth, was the detail I had been hottest about when discussing it with Wolfe Thursday night. I said it should be left open, that the item in the paper could say something like "some evening this month." Wolfe said that Hewitt, when phoning his fellow aristologists, would have to name a date. I said he could tell them it would have to be indefinite because it would depend on when Fritz could get something shipped by air from France. Gourmets love things shipped by air from France. But Wolfe had insisted, and now we were stuck with it, only five days to go.

So I hadn't liked the roundabout approach to Sarah Dacos, but it was obviously the best bet, and right after breakfast I had phoned Mrs Althaus to ask if she could give me ten minutes.

She had said yes, and I had gone, of course ignoring the tail problem. The more they saw me working the Althaus angle, the better. I told her there had been some developments which we would tell her about when we had figured them out, and it might help if she would let me take a look at everything that had been in her son's apartment, at least what was left of it. She said everything was left. The lease had nearly a year to go, and they hadn't tried to sublet. They hadn't removed anything, and as far as she knew the police hadn't either; they hadn't asked for permission to. I promised to take nothing without her permission if she would let me go and have a look, and she went and got the keys without phoning the lawyer or even her husband.

Perhaps I appeal more to middle-aged women than to young ones, but don't try to tell Wolfe that.