Rex Stout - And Four to Go

As Vetter started to speak, Nero Wolfe arose and headed for the tent, and I raised my brows. Surely, I thought, he’s not going to involve himself in the Holt problem; and then, seeing the look on his face, I caught on. The edges of the wooden chair seat had been cutting into his fanny for nearly an hour and he was in a tantrum, and he wanted to cool off a little before he was called to the mike. I grinned at him sympathetically as he passed and then gave my ear to Vetter. His soapy voice (I say soapy) came through the loudspeakers in a flow of lather, and after a couple of minutes of it I was thinking that it was only fair for Griffin, the runt, to sound like a man, and for Vetter, the handsome young idol of millions, to sound like whipped cream, when my attention was called. Wolfe was at the tent entrance, crooking a finger at me. As I got up and approached he backed into the tent, and I followed. He crossed to the rear entrance, lifted the flap, maneuvered his bulk through the hole, and held the flap for me. When I had made it he descended the five steps to the ground, walked to the car, grabbed the handle of the rear door, and pulled. Nothing doing. He turned to me.

“Unlock it.”

I stood. “Do you want something?”

“Unlock it and get in and get the thing started. We’re going.”

“We are like hell. You’ve got a speech to make.”

He glared at me. He knows my tones of voice as well as I know his. “Archie,” he said, “I am not being eccentric. There is a sound and cogent reason and I’ll explain on the way. Unlock this door.”

I shook my head. “Not till I hear the reason. I admit it’s your car.” I took the keys from my pocket and offered them. “Here. I resign.”

“Very well.” He was grim. “That man on the cot is dead. I lifted the blanket to adjust it. One of those knives is in his back, clear to the handle. He is dead. If we are still here when the discovery is made you know what will happen. We will be here all day, all night, a week, indefinitely. That is intolerable. We can answer questions at home as well as here. Confound it, unlock the door!”

“How dead is he?”

“I have told you he is dead.”

“Okay. You ought to know better. You do know better. We’re stuck. They wouldn’t ask us questions at home, they’d haul us back out here. They’d be waiting for us on the stoop and you wouldn’t get inside the house.” I returned the keys to my pocket. “Running out when you’re next on the program, that would be nice. The only question is do we report it now or do you make your speech and let someone else find it, and you can answer that.”

He had stopped glaring. He took in a long, deep breath, and when it was out again he said, “I’ll make my speech.”

“Fine. It’d be a shame to waste it. A question. Just now when you lifted the flap to come out I didn’t see you untie the tape fastening. Was it already untied?”

“Yes.”

“That makes it nice.” I turned and went to the steps, mounted, raised the flap for him, and followed him into the tent. He crossed to the front and on out, and I stepped to the cot. Philip Holt lay facing the wall, with the blanket up to his neck, and I pulled it down far enough to see the handle of the knife, an inch to the right of the point of the shoulder blade. The knife blade was all buried. I lowered the blanket some more to get at a hand, pinched a fingertip hard for ten seconds, released it, and saw it stay white. I picked some fluff from the blanket and dangled it against his nostrils for half a minute. No movement. I put the blanket back as I had found it, went to the metal box on the table and lifted the lid, and saw that the shortest knife, the one with the six-inch blade, wasn’t there.

As I went to the rear entrance and raised the flap, Dick Vetter’s lather or whipped cream, whichever you prefer, came to an end through the loudspeakers, and as I descended the five steps the meadowful of picnickers was cheering.

Our sedan was the third car on the right from the foot of the steps. The second car to the left of the steps was a 1955 Plymouth, and I was pleased to see that it still had an occupant, having previously noticed her-a woman with careless gray hair topping a wide face and a square chin, in the front seat but not behind the wheel.

I circled around to her side and spoke through the open window. “I beg your pardon. May I introduce myself?”

“You don’t have to, young man. Your name’s Archie Goodwin, and you work for Nero Wolfe, the detective.” She had tired gray eyes. “You were just out here with him.”

“Right. I hope you won’t mind if I ask you something. How long have you been sitting here?”

“Long enough. But it’s all right, I can hear the speeches. Nero Wolfe is just starting to speak now.”

“Have you been here since the speeches started?”

“Yes, I have. I ate too much of the picnic stuff and I didn’t feel like standing up in that crowd, so I came to sit in the car.”

“Then you’ve been here all the time since the speeches began?”

“That’s what I said. Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just checking on something. If you don’t mind. Has anyone gone into the tent or come out of it while you’ve been here?”

Her tired eyes woke up a little. “Ha,” she said, “so something’s missing. I’m not surprised. What’s missing?”

“Nothing, as far as I know. I’m just checking a certain fact. Of course you saw Mr. Wolfe and me come out and go back in. Anyone else, either going or coming?”

“You’re not fooling me, young man. Something’s missing, and you’re a detective.”

I grinned at her. “All right, have it your way. But I do want to know, if you don’t object.”

“I don’t object. As I told you, I’ve been right here ever since the speeches started, I got here before that. And nobody has gone into the tent, nobody but you and Nero Wolfe, and I haven’t either. I’ve been right here. If you want to know about me, my name is Anna Banau, Mrs. Alexander Banau, and my husband is a captain at Zoller’s-”

A scream came from inside the tent, an all-out scream from a good pair of lungs. I moved, to the steps, up, and past the flap into the tent. Flora Korby was standing near the cot with her back to it, her hand covering her mouth. I was disappointed in her. Granting that a woman has a right to scream when she finds a corpse, she might have kept it down until Wolfe had finished his speech.

Chapter 3

IT WAS A LITTLE after four o’clock when Flora Korby screamed. It was 4:34 when a glance outside through a crack past the flap of the tent’s rear entrance, the third such glance I had managed to make, showed me that the Plymouth containing Mrs. Alexander Banau was gone. It was 4:39 when the medical examiner arrived with his bag and found that Philip Holt was still dead. It was 4:48 when the scientists came, with cameras and fingerprint kits and other items of equipment, and Wolfe and I and the others were herded out to the extension, under guard. It was 5:16 when I counted a total of seventeen cops, state and county, in uniform and out, on the job. It was 5:30 when Wolfe muttered at me bitterly that it would certainly be all night. It was 5:52 when a chief of detectives named Baxter got so personal with me that I decided, finally and definitely, not to play. It was 6:21 when we all left Culp’s Meadows for an official destination. There were four in our car: one in uniform with Wolfe in the back seat, and one in his own clothes with me in front. Again I had someone beside me to tell me the way, but I didn’t put my arm across his shoulders.