Rex Stout - And Four to Go

Saul had the same notion at the same instant, and the sight of us two heading for him, with all that he knew that we didn’t know yet, was too much for him. He was out of his chair and plunging toward the door as I took my second step.

Then, of course, we had to touch him. I reached him first, not because I’m faster than Saul but because he was farther off. And the damn fool put up a fight, although I had him wrapped. He kicked Saul where it hurt, and knocked a lamp over, and bumped my nose with his skull. When he sank his teeth in my arm I thought, That will do for you, mister, and jerked the Marley from my pocket and slapped him above the ear, and he went down.

Turning, I saw that Dick Vetter had also wrapped his arms around someone, and she was neither kicking nor biting. In moments of stress people usually show what is really on their minds, even important public figures like TV stars. There wasn’t a word about it in the columns next day.

Chapter 7

I HAVE OFTEN WONDERED how Paul Rago felt when, at his trial a couple of months later, no evidence whatever was introduced about fingerprints. He knew then, of course, that it had been a treek and nothing but, that no prints had been lifted from the tape by Saul or anyone else, and that if he had kept his mouth shut and played along he might have been playing yet.

I once asked Wolfe what he would have done if that had happened.

He said. “It didn’t happen.”

I said, “What if it had?”

He said, “Pfui. The contingency was too remote to consider. It was as good as certain that the murderer had untied the tape. Confronted with the strong probability that it was about to be disclosed that his print was on the tape, he had to say something. He had to explain how it got there, and it was vastly preferable to do so voluntarily instead of waiting until evidence compelled it.”

I hung on. “Okay, it was a good trick, but I still say what if?”

“And I still say it is pointless to consider remote contingencies. What if your mother had abandoned you in a tiger’s cage at the age of three months? What would you have done?”

I told him I’d think it over and let him know.

As for motive, you can have three guesses if you want them, but you’ll never get warm if you dig them out of what I have reported. In all the jabber in Wolfe’s office that day, there wasn’t one word that had the slightest bearing on why Philip Holt died, which goes to show why detectives get ulcers. No, I’m wrong; it was mentioned that Philip Holt liked women, and certainly that had a bearing. One of the women he had liked was Paul Rago’s wife, an attractive blue-eyed number about half as old as her husband, and he was still liking her, and, unlike Flora Korby, she had liked him and proved it.

Paul Rago hadn’t liked that.

MURDER IS NO JOKE

Chapter 1

I WAS A LITTLE disappointed in Flora Gallant when she arrived that Tuesday morning for her eleven-o’clock appointment with Nero Wolfe. Her getup was a letdown. One of my functions as Wolfe’s factotum is checking on people who phone for an appointment with him, and when I learned that Flora Gallant was one of the staff of her brother Alec’s establishment on East Fifty-fourth Street, and remembered remarks a friend of mine named Lily Rowan had made about Alex Gallant, I had phoned Lily for particulars.

And got them. Gallant was crowding two others for top ranking in the world of high fashion. He thumbed his nose at Paris and sneered at Rome, and was getting away with it. He had refused to finish three dresses for the Duchess of Harwynd because she postponed flying over from London for fittings. He declined to make anything whatever for a certain famous movie actress because he didn’t like the way she handled her hips when she walked. He had been known to charge as little as eight hundred dollars for an afternoon frock, but it had been for a favorite customer so he practically gave it away.

And so forth. Therefore when I opened the door to admit his sister Flora that Tuesday morning it was a letdown to see a dumpy middle-aged female in a dark gray suit that was anything but spectacular. It needed pressing, and the shoulders were too tight, and her waist wasn’t where it thought it was. As I ushered her down the hall to the office and introduced her to Wolfe, I was thinking that if the shoemaker’s son went barefoot I supposed his sister could too, but all the same I felt cheated.

Her conversation was no more impressive than her costume, at least at the beginning. Seated on the edge of the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe’s desk, the fingers of both hands gripping the rim of the gray leather bag on her lap, she apologized, in a low meek mumble with just a trace of a foreign accent, for asking such an important man as Nero Wolfe to give any of his valuable time to her and her troubles. That didn’t sound promising, indicating as it did that she was looking for a bargain. As she went on with it Wolfe started a frown going, and soon he cut her off by saying that it would take less of his time if she would tell him what her troubles were.

She nodded. “I know. I just wanted you to understand that I don’t expect anything for myself. I’m not anybody myself, but you know who my brother is? My brother Alec?”

“Yes. Mr. Goodwin has informed me. An illustrious dressmaker.”

“He is not merely a dressmaker. He is an artist, a great artist.” She wasn’t arguing, just stating a fact. “This trouble is about him, and that’s why I must be careful with it. That’s why I come to you, and also”-she sent me a glance and then back to Wolfe-”also Mr. Archie Goodwin, because I know that although you are private detectives, you are gentlemen. I know you are worthy of confidence.”

She stopped, apparently for acknowledgment. Wolfe obliged her. “Umph.”

“Then it is understood I am trusting you?”

“Yes. You may.”

She looked at me. “Mr. Goodwin?”

“Right. Whatever Mr. Wolfe says. I only work here.”

She hesitated, seeming to consider if that was satisfactory, decided it was, and returned to Wolfe. “So I’ll tell you. I must explain that in France, where my brother and I were born and brought up, our name was not ‘Gallant.’ What it was doesn’t matter. I came to this country in nineteen-thirty-seven, when I was twenty-five years old, and Alex only came in nineteen-forty-five, after the war was over. He had changed his name to Gallant and entered legally under that name. Within seven years he had made a reputation as a designer, and then-Perhaps you remember his fall collection in nineteen-fifty-three?”

Wolfe grunted no.

Her right hand abandoned its grip on the bag to gesture. “But of course you are not married, and you have no mistress, feeling as you do about women. That collection showed what my brother was-an artist, a true creator. He got financial backing, more than he needed, and opened his place on Fifty-fourth Street. I had quit my job four years earlier-my job as a governess-in order to work with him and help him, and had changed my name to have it the same as his. From nineteen-fifty-three on it has been all a triumph, many triumphs. I will not say I had a hand in them, but I have been trying to help in my little way. The glory of great success has been my brother’s, but I have been with him, and so have others. But now trouble has come.”