Rex Stout - Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

"Are you in trouble?"

"No."

"Can I reach you if a need arises?"

"No."

"Very well." He hung up.

He was being tolerant because I was on a personal errand, none of his business. He hates to be bothered when he's up with the orchids, and if the errand had been for him he would have said I should have told Fritz.

Outside again, half a block west, cold-faced but with the blood going good, I entered a vestibule and pushed the button marked Cather. After two more pushes there was still no click – as expected. It was too damn cold to hang around, so I headed back for Eighth Avenue, with a notion about five or six fingers of bourbon, but with me the time for bourbon is when I'm going to let down, not when I have to pick up, so I went to a drugstore counter instead and got coffee.

When the coffee was down I went to the booth and dialed a number, hung up after ten rings with no answer, returned to the counter, and bought a glass of milk. Another trip to the booth; still no answer, and I ordered a corned beef on rye and coffee. There is never any rye bread in the kitchen of the old brownstone on West 35th Street. It was twenty minutes past six, on my fifth try at the phone, after the second piece of pumpkin pie and the fourth cup of coffee, when a voice said hello.

"Orrie? Archie. You alone?"

"Sure, I'm always alone. Did you go?"

"Yeah. I -"

"What'd you get?"

"I'd rather show you. Expect me in two minutes."

"What the hell, I'll come -"

"I'm in the neighborhood. Two minutes." I hung up.

I didn't stop to put on my overcoat and gloves. Two minutes of near-zero wind is a good test of your staying power. When I pushed the button in the vestibule the click came quick, and when I entered and started up the stairs Orrie called down from the top, "Hell, I could have come."

Once Nero Wolfe, showing off, said to me, " Vultus est index animi ," and I said, "That's not Greek," and he said, "A Latin proverb. The face is the index of the mind." It depends on whose face and whose mind. Across from you at the poker table, Saul Panzer's face is an index of absolutely nothing. But you keep on trying, and I was still at it on Orrie Cather's face after he showed me in and took my hat and coat and we sat. I sat and eyed him until he demanded, "Can't you place me?"

I said, " Vultus est index animi ."

"Good," he said. "I've often wondered. What the hell's eating you?"

"Just curiosity. Is it possible that you're playing me?"

"For God's sake. Playing you how? For what?"

"I wish I knew." I crossed my legs. "Okay, I'll report. I followed the script. I arrived at a quarter past four on the dot, pushed the button several times, got no reaction as expected, used the key you gave me, took the elevator to the fourth floor, used the other key, and entered. No one in the living room, and I went to the bedroom. I don't say someone was there, because properly speaking a corpse is not someone. It was on the floor not far from the bed. I had never seen Isabel Kerr or a picture of her, but I suppose it had been her. A pink thing with lace and pink slippers, no stockings. A couple of -"

"You're saying she was dead?"

"Don't interrupt. A couple of inches over five feet, hundred and ten pounds, well-designed oval face, blue eyes, lots of clover-blossom-honey hair, small ears close -"

"By God. By God ."

"Her?"

"Yes."

"Stop interrupting. Mr. Wolfe never does. I didn't have to touch her to check. I mean it . There was a bruise on the forehead and a big dent in the skull, two inches above and back of the left ear. On the floor, three feet from her right shoulder, was a marble ashtray which looked heavy enough to dent a thicker skull than hers probably was. There were purple spots on an arm and a leg. Cadaveric lividities to you. Her forehead was good and cold, and -"

"You said you didn't touch her."

"I touch with my fingers. I don't call applying a wrist to a forehead or a leg touching. The leg was cold too. It had been a corpse for at least five hours and probably more. The ashtray had been wiped. There were butts and ashes on the carpet but no particles on the tray. I was in there a total of about six minutes. The idea of staying to look for things didn't appeal to me." I put a hand in a pocket and got something. "Here are your keys."

He didn't see them. His jaw was clamped. He unclamped it to say, "Playing you. For God's sake. Playing you."

"Naturally I'm curious."

He got up and went through a doorway. I tossed the keys onto a table by a window and looked around. It was a good-sized room with three windows, with furniture that would do all right for a bachelor who wasn't fussy. The only light was from a pair of bulbs in a wall bracket, but there was a lamp by an easy chair that wasn't turned on. Orrie came back with a bottle and two glasses and offered me one, but I said no thanks, I had just dined. He put one glass down and poured in the other, took a healthy gulp, made a face, and sat down.

"Playing you," he said. "Nuts. Now you ask me where I've been since eight o'clock this morning and can I prove it."

I shook my head. "Since I'm merely curious, that would be stretching it. If I wanted to be nasty I would have opened up by barking at you something like, 'Why did you leave the ashtray on the floor?' Of course we do have to consider facts, such as the fact that I may be the only one besides you who knows that her being dead pulls a thorn for you. A bad thorn in deep. So of course I'm curious about one detail. Did you kill her?"

"No. My God, Archie. Am I a sap?"

"No. You're no mental giant, but you're not a sap. It would be nice if you could sell me. After all, you pulled me in, you knew I was going there today. It would be extra nice if you were covered."

"I'm not covered." He was staring at me but possibly not seeing me. He took a mouthful of whiskey and swallowed it twice. "As I told you, I'm on a job for Bascom. I was out at eight and picked up a subject a little before nine and was on him all day. It was -"

"Single tail?"

"Yes. Just routine. From nine-nineteen until twelve-thirty-five I was in the lobby of an office building."

"No company?"

"No."

"Then I'm still curious. You would be if we traded spots, you know damn well you would, but that's all I am, just curious. Do you want to ask me anything?"

"Yes, I do. You had gloves and keys, I don't mean mine. You knew there might be something there. Why didn't you take a quick look?"

I grinned at him. "You don't mean that."

"The hell I don't."

I nodded. "Now and then you are a sap." I stood up. "As you know, Orrie, and as I know, you think it would be fine if you had my job. That's all right, there's nothing wrong with ambition. But what if you had got too ambitious? What if you knew there was nothing there to point to you? What if you had arranged for one man, me, to go there at a quarter past four, and for another man, maybe a cop on an anonymous tip, to arrive a few minutes later? It wouldn't have hooked me for murder, since the ME would set the time, but I would have the keys on me, not only yours, and the rubber gloves, and that would have been good for at least a couple of years. Of course I didn't really believe it, but being the nervous type -"