Rex Stout - And Four to Go

Tabby will do for him, though I know his name and address. Tabby will do. It had been a mistake to bait him with two Cs, one down and one if and when, since a pair of twenties would have been more his speed, and it might make him nervous, but I had followed orders. I had briefed him thoroughly, shown him pictures of Millard Bynoe and his wife, and even introduced Vanda to him by giving him a spray, though not flamingo-pink, from one of Wolfe’s plants. There would be a lot of bosoms sporting orchids in that stampede, from Cattleyas to Calanthes. Also, to cinch it, I was going to give him a sign.

By the time I reached Saint Patrick’s at Fiftieth Street, with three blocks to go, the street was no better than the sidewalks-absolutely solid with dressed-up bipeds, some of them looking pleased and even happy. The display of lipstick colors and patterns, goofy hats, and flossy neckties deserved more appreciation than I had time for as I wormed my way north, rubbing not only elbows but shoulders and hips. As I pushed through to the curb in front of Saint Thomas’s, I was thinking it might be worth while to come back next year on my own time for a thorough survey of the panorama, provided I could rent a suit of armor at a bargain. At Fifty-second Street a six-foot amazon in a purple ensemble had got me in the ribs.

I stretched my own six feet by rising on my toes and spotted Tabby, anchored out of the current in a niche flanking the church entrance. He was a little squirt, several inches under six feet, but I got enough of him to see that the C I had given him had gone down the drain for a new topcoat, a gray plaid, and a new hat, a classy gray snap-brim. The true Easter-parade spirit, I thought, and grinned at him when I caught his eye. It wasn’t necessary to shove through to him, since he had been well briefed.

I needed a vantage point for aiming as they came out of the church, and there it was beside me-a wooden box there on the sidewalk at the edge of the curb, some sixteen inches high, just the elevation I needed. But it was occupied. Standing on it was a young woman in a tan woolen belted coat, with a camera in her hand held at breast level as she faced downtown, scanning the rabble as it shuffled along. I touched her elbow and she looked down at me. I gave her my best smile, which was no strain after one glimpse of her face.

“Have you ever,” I asked her, “stood on a box with a peer of the realm?”

“Certainly,” she declared. “Don’t bother me, I’m busy.” She went back to scanning.

I directed my voice up to her ear. “But you have never stood on a box with a prince of the blood, and this is your chance. My grandmother, the queen dowager, is coming out of that church and I want to get a shot of her. I’ll stand on the edge and I won’t jostle.”

She was facing down again. “I hate to refuse, Your Highness, but it’s not my box. It was lent me by a grandee, and he would-”

“Hey, Archie Goodwin!”

The voice came from behind, and I turned. There was another box at the curb, two paces along, and beyond it still another. On them were men with cameras, and straddling the gap, with his left foot on one box and his right on the other, was a third man with a camera, grinning at me.

He spoke. “You don’t remember me.”

“Sure I do. The Gazette. Joe. Joe Merrick-no, wait a minute-Herrick. Joe Herrick. Did you lend this lady the box she’s on?”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t? Look at her!”

“I have. Any objection if she shares it with me?”

“That’s up to her. I’d rather she shared it with me, but you had the idea first. What are you after? Where’s the corpse?”

“No corpse. I’m just practicing.” I turned to tell her I had cleared it with the grandee, but at that moment all four of them brought their cameras up to their chins, facing the church entrance. The exodus had started. I planted my left foot on the edge of her box, heaved myself up, and caught the edge of the next-door box with my right foot with a fancy spread-eagle. It was too near a split to be comfortable, but at least I was up high enough to focus over the heads of the crowd. A glance showed me that Tabby had left his niche and edged through to the line of exit.

Out they came, all flavors. The men ran from cutaways to sacks and from toppers to floppies, not more than half of them with topcoats, and the women displayed an assortment of furs, coats, jackets, stoles, suits, and hats for the birds. I shot a couple to warm up the camera, and once I thought I spotted my target, but the man with her was not Milliard Bynoe, and as she approached I saw that her orchid spray wasn’t Vanda, but Phalaenopsis. Then suddenly there she was, headed straight toward me, with a man on either side of her, and the one on her right was Bynoe. Her fur jacket, sable or long-haired hamster or something, was open, and drooping below her left shoulder was a ten-inch spray of glowing pink. She was one of the most attractive objects I had seen that day, and as she got closer and I aimed the camera for another shot the back of my mind was reflecting that you couldn’t find a better argument to persuade a man to marry a woman twenty years his junior, which was what Millard Bynoe had done.

Having given Tabby a sign, I had the camera to my eye again, so I didn’t actually see all of what happened in the next two seconds, but I can show one instant of it, the instant I pressed the button, with four pictures I took of her. I had warned Tabby not to try for the spray while cameras were on her, as I knew they would be as she left the church, and of course her having an escort at each elbow made it impossible to sneak up from the side, but evidently the vision of another C was too much for him, and he had worked his way around to get at her from the front. Seeing his head and arm in the finder, and the arm and hand of the man on Mrs. Bynoe’s left warding him off, I lowered the camera, slid off the boxes, and started forward with the notion of grabbing his coattail and jerking him away, but he had wriggled off before I got there. Mrs. Bynoe was looking upset, with her teeth clamped on her lip, and her escorts were asking her questions, but she shook her head, said something to her husband, and turned uptown, the men close beside her. The pink spray was intact.

I looked around, over shoulders and between hats, saw Tabby making himself small against the railing, and saw him move, uptown. The nervy little cuss was stalking his prey. It wouldn’t have been discreet to chat with him there in the public eye, even if I had anything helpful to say, and anyway it was understood that he was strictly on his own, but there was nothing against my being an impartial observer. So I tagged along, some eight rows of hats behind Tabby and fifteen or so behind the trio.

They took their time. Of course Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic, but one of the Bynoe limousines was probably parked nearby on Madison, so Tabby didn’t have all day. At Fifty-fourth Street they headed across the avenue, and that was slow going since they kept three abreast. By the time they reached the other curb Tabby had closed in to eight or ten feet, and I was keeping my distance from Tabby.

It happened when they had gone some fifty yards along Fifty-fourth Street, about halfway to Madison. The throng wasn’t as thick there as on the avenue, but it was still a throng. Tabby was almost directly behind them, and I wasn’t far off, when suddenly Mrs. Bynoe stopped short, grabbed her husband’s arms, and said to him in a sort of half-strangled scream, “I can’t stand it! I didn’t want to-here on the street-I can’t breathe! Mil, you-” She let go of his arms, straightened up, rigid, shuddered all over, and toppled. The two men had her before she went down, but then she went into convulsion, her neck and spine arching backward and she got away from them and was on the sidewalk.