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

"You're too young for me. I've decided women under fifty are-what are they?"

"Well, jejune's a good word."

"Too many Js. I'll think of one and tell you this evening. Two things. One, I have to be home at midnight. I'm sleeping in the office and- I'll explain when I see you."

"Good Lord, has he rented your room?"

"As a matter of fact, he has, for one night. I won't explain that. Hold it a second." I transferred the receiver to my right hand and used the left to slip the photograph from my pocket. "Here's some poetry. Listen." I read it, with feeling. "Do you recognize it?"

"Certainly. So do you."

"No I don't, but it seems familiar."

"It should. Where did you get it?"

"I'll tell you someday. What is it?"

"It's a take-off of the last four lines of the second stanza of Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' It's sort of clever, but no one should monkey with Keats. Escamillo, you're a pretty good detective and you dance like an angel, and you have other outstanding qualities, but you will never be a highbrow. Come and read Keats to me."

I told her she was too jejune, hung up, slipped the photograph back in my pocket, and went out and took my fifth taxi in five hours. The client could afford it.

It was five minutes to two when I put my hat and coat on the rack in the hall, went to the door of the dining room, told Wolfe, who was at the table, that it looked and felt like snow, and proceeded to the kitchen. I don't join Wolfe when I arrive in the middle of a meal; we agree that for one man to hurry with meat or fish while the other dawdles with pastry or cheese is bad for the atmosphere. Fritz put things on my breakfast table and brought what was left of the baked bluefish, and I asked him how he was getting on with the menu for next Thursday's blowout.

"I'm not discussing that," he said. "I am not discussing anything, Archie. He was in my room for more than an hour before lunch, talking with the television on loud. If it is so dangerous I will not talk at all."

I told him we should be back to normal by the time the shad roe started coming, and he threw up his hands and said good God in French.

When I finished and went to the office Wolfe was standing over by the globe, turning it and scowling at it. The man who gave him that globe, the biggest one I have ever seen, couldn't have known what a big help it would be. Whenever a situation gets so ticklish that he wishes he were somewhere else, he can walk over to the globe and pick spots to go to. Wonderful. As I entered he asked if I had anything, and when I nodded he went to his desk and I turned on the radio, took a yellow chair around near his elbow, and reported. It didn't take long, since there had been no conversation to speak of, just the action. I didn't mention the phone call to Lily Rowan because it had been purely personal. Having read the poetry twice, he handed the photograph back to me and said she had an ear for meter.

"I told you she wasn't a sap," I said. "Pretty neat, doing that with the last four lines of the second stanza of Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' "

His eyes narrowed at me. "How the deuce do you know that? You don't read Keats."

I shrugged. "Back in Ohio in my boyhood days. As you know, I have quite a memory. I don't brag about that, but I have a brag coming about this." I tapped the photograph. "We know why she lied. She's involved. Possibly not too deep; it could be that she merely didn't want to admit she was close with him, close enough for him to tell her about the FBI. Or possibly very deep. 'Ever, ever shalt thou kiss.' And 'Forever wilt thou love.' But he told her he was going to marry another girl, so she shot him, probably with his own gun. The second alternative, which we prefer by far. It would be hard to nail her. She might be able to prove she was at that lecture but not what time she left. Possibly she wasn't there at all. She spent the evening at Sixty-three Arbor Street, having it out with the bold lover, and she shot him before the G-men arrived. Does that appeal to you?"

"As conjecture, yes."

"Then I should look into the lecture question. She might have a tight alibi. According to Cramer, the G-men left about eleven o'clock, and of course they had combed the place, whether they killed him or not; they got the material he had gathered. So they arrived not later than ten-thirty, or even make it ten-forty. If she shot him she was out before they came. The New School is on Twelfth Street. If anyone saw her at the lecture as late as ten-twenty, or even a quarter past, she's clear. I'll start asking."

"No."

"No?"

"No. If they learned you were doing that, either by surveillance of you or through inadvertence, they would know we were seriously considering the possibility that that woman killed him, and that would be disastrous. We must maintain the illusion that we are convinced that a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Morris Althaus and that we are procuring evidence to establish it; otherwise our preparations for next Thursday evening will come to nothing. For protection of our flank we needed to know definitely if Miss Dacos was lying, and you have settled that: she was. Satisfactory. She lied to conceal the fact that she had compromised herself, and that satisfies us. Whether her involvement was merely a secret intimacy she doesn't want revealed, or was murder by her hand, is of no importance to us."

"Cramer would love to know that. After giving us the steer.

I'll call him and tell him, to relieve his mind."

"Pfui. When we have relieved our minds by finishing the job we were hired to do we'll consider our obligation to him. If it seems feasible without excessive effort we'll expose the murderer for him. If it isn't a member of the FBI, as he expects and hopes, he won't thank us, but we'll owe him no apology."

"Then we forget the murder until after Thursday."

"Yes."

"That's just dandy. Agencies are closed today and tomorrow, so Hewitt can't start looking until Monday. I'll be at the Flamingo this evening if anything happens; for instance, if Hewitt calls to say he has decided that it's too much trouble and we have to find someone else. Tomorrow Miss Rowan is having a crowd in for Sunday lunch and dancing and I'll stay afterwards to help empty ashtrays. Any instructions for this afternoon?"

"Turn off the radio," he growled.

11

It bothered me for four days and four nights, from Saturday afternoon, when Wolfe said we would forget the murder, to Wednesday morning, when I did something about it on my own.

There were two aspects. First, if the conjecture about Sarah Dacos, or something like it, was actually a fact, I had removed evidence from the scene of a murder and was withholding it. Of course the cops had had their whack at it, they had certainly seen the photograph and had left it there, and Mrs Althaus had given me the keys, but that was only a legal out. It was the second aspect that really bothered me. Cramer had saved our licenses for us, at least so far, and it was me, Archie Goodwin, he had invited to a conference and bought a carton of milk for and turned loose on a homicide. I have no objection to playing games with cops, sometimes you want to and sometimes you have to, but this was different. I owed Cramer something personally.