Rex Stout - And Four to Go

Those errands. Still no answer from Iris Innes’s phone, and when I went to Arbor Street no answer to her doorbell either. At the Gazette Lon Cohen told me that Joe Herrick was at the DA’s office and might be there all day. So was Iris Innes, but he wasn’t sure about Alan Geiss and Augustus Pizzi. After thirty minutes out for lunch at an oyster bar I called on All-over Pictures, Inc., but no one there was answering questions about Augustus Pizzi. Having got the address of Alan Geiss, the free-lance, from Lon Cohen, I took the subway to Washington Heights to pass the time, and time was what I passed. His landlady, getting a kick out of it, one of her lodgers having his picture in the paper, would have loved to talk, but she was cross-eyed and I was cross, so I left her, went and found a phone booth and made my three hourly calls: to Iris Innes, no answer; to Wolfe, no news; and to the assistant DA, whose name was Doyle. When Doyle said he wanted to see me I was just as well pleased. Debating with him about the nature of evidence would be fully as helpful as what I was doing and would be more fun. I sought the subway.

But Doyle didn’t resume the discussion of evidence. As soon as I was seated at the end of his desk he took an object from a drawer and handed it to me and asked, “Do you know that man?”

It was an unusually good police picture, an excellent likeness, both the front view and the profile, but I thought it proper to study it a little. Having done so, I nodded and dropped it on the desk.

“I wouldn’t swear to it, but it looks like a specimen I met once in connection with a case-wait and I’ll tell you his name. Yeah. Tabby. A couple of years ago. I could have handed him in for a little mistake he made but didn’t. Why, has he made another mistake?”

“He has been identified as the man who grabbed the orchids off of Mrs. Bynoe as she lay on the sidewalk. By three people.”

“I’ll be darned. He has, or the picture has?”

“The picture-when did you see him last?”

I grinned at him. “Now look. I told you this morning what Mr. Wolfe told Inspector Cramer. Cramer himself said that he couldn’t have stuck the needle in her when he took the orchids because she was already dying, so what has it got to do with the murder? It’s like the film, exactly. I realize we’re not in a courtroom, so you’re not bound by the rules of evidence, but I am. I don’t intend-”

“When did you see him last?”

“Nope. Connect him up. Make it material and I’ll tell you every word I ever exchanged with him. I have a wonderful memory.”

He was unquestionably displeased. It looked for a while as if the next time I touched a sidewalk I would be under bond, and when he left the room, telling me to wait, with a dick there for company, I was sure of it, but when he came back after a long quarter of an hour he had something else on his mind and merely told me that was all. He didn’t even warn me to keep myself available.

So I got back uptown and to the office of Surequick Pix shortly after five o’clock, only to find I was in for another wait. My job wasn’t finished and wouldn’t be for an hour. He explained that the day after Easter was one of the busiest days of the year, and I went out to a booth and phoned Wolfe and tried Iris Innes again, and bought evening papers to get the latest on the Bynoe murder. There were pictures of all the church-front photographers. The one of me was a shot taken that day at the Gazette office, and I was squinting, which makes me look older.

A little after six the transparencies were ready, and, while I didn’t expect to find that I had caught anything as interesting as a needle in the air, there was a viewer right there on the counter and I thought I might as well take a look. There were eleven of them altogether. Five were close-ups I had taken previously up in the plant rooms, two were of the exodus from the church before Mrs. Bynoe appeared, and four showed her and her escorts as they approached. The one I looked at longest was the fourth and last, and it confirmed my memory of what I had seen in the finder: all it had of Tabby was his arm and shoulder and the back of his head, and he was a good three feet away from Mrs. Bynoe.

No needle, no murder evidence, but a little caution wouldn’t hurt, so I asked the man for another envelope, which he kindly provided with no extra charge, put the Bynoe pictures in it, and put one envelope in my right-hand pocket and the other in my left. If the Mayor or the Governor or J. Edgar Hoover stopped me on the sidewalk and asked to see the pictures I took of the Easter parade it wasn’t necessary for him to know that I had concentrated on Mrs. Millard Bynoe. No one stopped me. It was half past six, still daylight, as I mounted the stoop of the brownstone, used my key, and found, to my surprise, that the chain-bolt wasn’t on.

But that surprise was nothing to what followed. The big old oak rack was so covered with hats and coats that I had to put mine on a chair, and Wolfe’s voice, raised a little for an audience, was coming through the open door to the office. I walked the length of the hall, looked in, saw District Attorney Skinner seated at my desk in my chair, and the room full of people. It was a shock. I don’t like other people sitting in my chair, not even a District Attorney.

Chapter 7

AS I ENTERED, heads turned and Wolfe stopped talking. Since my chair was occupied I wanted to ask him if I was invited, but held it; and as I circled around the cluster of chairs he spoke.

“That’s Mr. Goodwin’s desk, Mr. Skinner. If you don’t mind?”

That helped a little, but not much. He had never before arranged to stage a charade without even telling me, and besides, I had spent a good part of the day, under instructions, trying to corral four of those present: Iris Innes and Joe Herrick, whom I was acquainted with, and Alan Geiss and Augustus Pizzi, whom I had seen standing on boxes the day before. There was a vacant chair back of Geiss, and Skinner got up and moved to it. Inspector Cramer was just beyond, and in front of him was Henry Frimm. In the red leather chair, exactly as he had sat the previous evening, using only half the seat, with his back straight and his fists on his thighs, was Millard Bynoe.

Bynoe and Frimm and Cramer and Skinner I could stand, but the sight of the four photographers, after the day I had spent, was too much for me. I stood at my desk and asked Wolfe, “Am I in the way?”

“Sit down, Archie.” He was brusque. “The idea of this gathering came from Mr. Bynoe, and he arranged for it with Mr. Skinner. We have been at it half an hour but have made no progress. Sit down.”

I accepted that, since a billionaire philanthropist might plausibly have considerable drag with a District Attorney, but even so, if they had been there by six o’clock the preparations must have taken more than an hour, and I had phoned in at a quarter past five and he hadn’t mentioned it. He needed a lesson in cooperation. I got the envelope from my right-hand pocket and tossed it on his desk. If Cramer got curious and demanded a look, and wondered why I had been specifically interested in Mrs. Bynoe, let Wolfe juggle it. Of course, he would merely pick it up and drop it in a drawer.

But he didn’t. The Centrex had been bought for making a permanent record of color variations in blossoms, and the viewer was there on the desk. He pulled it to him, took the transparencies from the envelope, inserted one, inspected it, removed it, and inserted another.