Archie in the Crosshairs

Chapter 5

After putting away a breakfast of broiled Georgia ham and hash brown potatoes in the kitchen, I complimented Fritz on the ham and went to the office, where I glared at the telephone on my desk, wondering when we would get another call from the man — I continued to believe it was a man — with the high-pitched voice. As if it could read my mind, the instrument rang at that very moment.

I recited the usual “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking,” and held my breath.

“Oh yes, Mr. Goodwin, I know that you work with Mr. Wolfe.” It was a woman’s voice, with no regional accent. “You sound most pleasant,” she added.

“I am told my phone manners are one of my strongest suits, Miss — or is it Mrs...?”

“It’s Miss — Miss Cordelia Hutchinson.”

“A very nice name. What can we do for you?”

“I would like to... well, to hire your Mr. Nero Wolfe,” she said, her voice now just above a whisper, as if someone were listening.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes, yes I am, quite alone.” Still near a whisper.

“Then feel free to speak a little louder, Miss Hutchinson. Tell me why you want to hire Mr. Wolfe.”

“It is very personal,” she confided. “Terribly personal.”

“I assure you that’s normally the case when people seek Mr. Wolfe’s assistance. But I will need more specifics about your concerns before I talk to him. As I am sure you can appreciate, he is a very busy man.”

“Oh, I am sure that he is, Mr. Goodwin, I am sure that he is. I have read much about his reputation. But won’t he accept me as a client if I say to you that my situation is very... well, very frightening?”

“I can ask him, of course, but I am being candid when I say that unless he knows more about your situation, he is not likely to see you.”

There was a long pause on the other end. I thought I might have lost her except that I could hear breathing.

“All right,” she sighed after a half-minute, which seemed longer. “Please tell Mr. Wolfe I am being blackmailed, and it is destroying my life.”

“Can you give me any more information about this blackmailing? As in: Who is doing it, and why? Take your time.”

“I do not think you realize how hard this is for me, Mr. Goodwin,” she said, her voice starting to crack. “I have thought about making this call now for almost a week. I am glad you can’t see me at this moment, because my hands are shaking.”

“You do realize, Miss Hutchinson, that if Mr. Wolfe does agree to see you, and that is by no means certain, he will ask you the same questions I am going to, and many, many more, some of them very direct and demanding of answers.”

“Yes... I understand that.”

“How did you hear from the blackmailer?”

“Letters, two of them, and a telephone call.”

“I assume you live in New York City?”

“I do now, yes. Up on Sutton Place, with my parents.”

“Where can I reach you?”

“I would prefer calling you again.”

“Have it your way. Because you seem to know something about Nero Wolfe, you are probably aware that he does not come cheap.”

“Money is not an issue for me, Mr. Goodwin.”

“All right, Miss Hutchinson. I will discuss your case, such as I know of it, with Mr. Wolfe today. I suggest you telephone me sometime after four this afternoon, and I will tell you his decision.”

“That is so very kind, thank you. You sound like a nice person. Please tell him that I am desperate.” Her voice began to crack again.

“I will tell him. I expect to hear from you shortly after four.” She promised she would call, and we signed off.

I then dialed the direct line of Lon Cohen of the New York Gazette, who I mentioned earlier. Lon is not only a good poker player, he is a newspaperman extraordinaire, and we have tapped his knowledge of the city and its inhabitants more times than I can count. But in return, he has gotten a bundle of scoops on cases Wolfe has solved. Lon does not have a title I am aware of at the Gazette, America’s fifth-largest daily newspaper, but he does have an office on the twentieth floor of the paper’s Midtown tower, just two doors from the publisher himself.

He answered on the first ring. “Tidings of the day, oh chronicler of the foibles and follies of the daily life in our nation’s greatest city,” I said.

“Calling to chortle because of your winnings with the pasteboards the other night?” he snapped.

“Heaven forbid that I should ever chortle. Over the long haul, you have picked my pocket more times than I have picked yours on the green baize of Saul’s poker table. I come before you, hat in hand, humbly seeking information.”

“Huh! You’ve never done anything humbly in your life. Well, out with it, gumshoe. We do have deadlines here, you know.”

“As you have so often reminded me. What can you tell me about one Cordelia Hutchinson?”

“The comely young railroad millionairess? What do you need to know? And why?”

“Whoa! One question at a time, scrivener. We may — and I do mean may — have us a client, but that is anything but certain right at the moment. And it is not for publication at this time.”

“Understood. I can tell you a little about said young lady off the top of my head, although I’ll call the morgue for the clips on her, if you’d like to take a look at them — but only in my office, of course.”

A half hour later, after leaving the brownstone by the rear exit, I was in Lon’s small, unadorned office with a dandy view of the Chrysler Building, listening to him chew out an editor in the newsroom fifteen floors below over the phone.

“What do you mean, our man on the Capitol beat doesn’t know how to reach the congressman? Whatever happened to enterprise reporting, for God’s sake? The guy is clearly holed up someplace and doesn’t want to talk about that lady he’s been seen with all over Washington. Where in the hell are our reporter’s contacts? Damn, if the Times or the Herald-Tribune or, heaven forbid, the Daily News, beats us to this, there will be hell to pay, and several people on this paper will be doing the paying — and that includes you.”

Lon slammed the receiver down so hard I thought it would break. “Pretty impressive,” I told him. “Are you always that hard to please?”

“Archie, you haven’t seen anything. Two weeks ago, I had a guy canned because of — oh, never mind, it’s not worth retelling. Okay, here are the Hutchinson clips.” He slid two fat envelopes across the desk to me.

“Your crew has written quite a bit about her,” I said.

“Almost all of it in the society pages, which I know you do not usually read. Am I sniffing a scandal someplace here?”

“Is the lady someone who might be part of a scandal?” I countered.

Lon ran his hand over dark, slicked-back hair. “Beats me, Archie. She’s young, single, twenty-four or so, nice-looking but just short of beautiful, or so I would say. You can look at the pictures of her and judge for yourself. The last few years, she’s been linked with a number of eligible swells, most of them who come from money like her.”

I went through the clippings and agreed with Lon’s assessment of Cordelia: Her photos showed her to be fresh-faced, well turned-out, and undeniably pretty — but beautiful? Not quite. An article several years old focused on her coming-out party on the rolling green of the family’s splendid estate up near Katonah. Other stories, some with pictures, placed her at elegant gatherings in Newport and the Hamptons, always smiling demurely and clad in elegant designer gowns.

The three most recent articles, all from the last six months, included pictures of Cordelia with Lance “Lanny” Mercer III, heir to the Mercer Aviation Corp. millions. Perhaps the respective families were hoping for a dynastic marriage to merge their rail and aeronautic empires.

All the while I was going through the Gazette’s material on Miss Hutchinson, Lon was on one or another of his three phones firing off orders like a drill sergeant addressing a bunch of raw recruits. “Always instructive to see you in action,” I told him, rising to leave. “Thanks for getting me the clips.”

“Just remember the favor,” he muttered, waving a hand absently and preparing to make another call. I pitied whoever would be its recipient.

I was back in the office transferring orchid germination records onto file cards at eleven when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, placed a raceme of Cattleya in the vase on his desk blotter, asked if I had slept well, and buzzed Fritz in the kitchen for beer.

“I scanned the block from my bedroom window this morning, and it appears the police car is gone,” I told him when he had gotten his bulk settled and begun riffling through the morning mail I had opened and stacked on the desk.

“No doubt Inspector Cramer has lost interest in the foofaraw of the other night. He has plenty of larger day-to-day worries.”

“No doubt. By the way, we got a telephone call this morning.”

“From... that man?”

“No, from — believe it or not — a prospective client.”

“Pah! I am not interested. You know that.”

“Pah, yourself. You are well aware of the sorry state of our bank balance. This is the answer to our prayers.”

“Yours, perhaps, but not mine,” Wolfe said, popping the cap on the first of two chilled bottles of beer Fritz had placed before him. “Besides, we have other matters to deal with.”

“Which is precisely what Saul is doing. We can’t let this bird knock us out of commission — and commissions. As you have so often said in this very room, it takes a lot of money to run the operation here, what with salaries for Fritz, Theodore, and me, to say nothing of the grocery bills, the books you buy by the dozen, and, of course, the beer.”

“I do not buy books by the dozen,” Wolfe said with a sniff.

“Okay, so I threw that in just to see if you were listening. But over the course of a year, you do help to keep our local bookseller, Mr. Murger, in the black. I’ve been getting rusty sitting around, and I need some action or I will start to get cranky. You surely don’t want that to happen.”

Wolfe raised his eyebrows. “Start to get cranky? I was not aware you had ever ceased.”

“Do you see what I mean? When we don’t have business, we get on each other’s nerves. I know you hate to hear this, but we need to be working, and not just for the money, although it helps.”

I was getting to him. He began tracing circles with his index finger on the arm of his chair and drew in his usual cubic bushel of air. Letting it out, he conceded, “All right, who was the caller?” I stifled a smile and mentioned her name.

“The railway heiress, I believe,” Wolfe said.

“So you read the society columns, eh?”

“On occasion. Report.”

I gave him a verbatim account of my conversation with Cordelia Hutchinson — hardly challenging given its brevity — and summarized my findings in the Gazette’s files on the young lady. As I talked, Wolfe’s facial expressions varied from unease to outright disgust. When I finished, he leaned back, eyes closed, and laced his hands over his stomach.

After a prolonged sigh, he stirred. “Confound it, have her come.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning, eleven.”

“Should I have her arrive through the passageway?”

“Yes, give her the directions. If she asks you why, tell her it is to protect her privacy.”

“She’ll buy that. Do I have any other instructions in the meantime?”

“Find out if Saul has made any progress on his assignments and ask Miss Rowan her opinion of Miss Hutchinson. I presume their paths have crossed in the world of what the newspapers term ‘high society.’”

I mentioned Lily Rowan earlier. She and I have been what might be called “special friends” for years, and I see no need to elaborate on that term. Lily is very beautiful, very lazy, and very rich. Her wealth comes from her late father, an Irish immigrant who made a fortune building much of New York City’s current sewer system.

Although Nero Wolfe has an aversion to women, he long ago made an exception for Lily, at least in part because the first time they met, she asked, demurely, if she might be allowed to see his vast array of orchids in the greenhouse. This is a request Wolfe rarely rejects, as his pride in his orchids is every bit as great as his love of fine foods and good books.

Lily lives in a penthouse topping a ten-story building just off Park Avenue that contains, among other things, an off-white Austrian grand piano with ninety-seven keys; artworks by Renoir, Monet, Picasso, and Matisse; and a nineteen-by-thirty-four — foot Kashan carpet in seven colors. I have said that Lily is lazy, but I must also mention that she has a strong social conscience and generously lends both her time and her money to several “good works” organizations that aid the less fortunate. One more point: Lily’s wealth is not what attracted me to her, and whenever we venture out, whether to dinner, the theatre, or a hockey game at the Garden, I pay — period.

“To what do I owe this call, Escamillo?” Lily asked, using the name she tagged me with after I had had a run-in with a very angry bull in an Upstate meadow some years back.

“I seek information,” I told her.

“Ah, I might have known! Is that all I am to you, a source of dirt on the great and the near-great in this sordid metropolis of ours?”

“You know better than that, fair lady. I cherish you for your grace on the dance floor, your winning smile, your wonderful sense of humor, your love of the New York Rangers — which I share — and, of course, your ability to cheer me up when I fall into a dark mood.”

“You say the sweetest things to a girl. I trust you are not now in one of those dark moods.”

“No, but if I were, the sound of your voice would have lifted me out of it already. What I would like today is any knowledge you have of one Miss Hutchinson of the railroad dynasty.”

“The fetching Cordelia? Isn’t she just a bit young for you?”

“Age knows no barriers, where love is concerned.”

“Beautifully said, you sweet-talker. Now why do you really want to know about her?”

“You’ve seen right through me, as usual. Believe it or not, she may just become a client of ours.”

“That is indeed hard to believe. Cordelia and I don’t know each other well, but we did serve together on the board of an orphanage last year. I was rotating off the board as she was joining it, so we overlapped for a few months. I found her to be reserved and humble to the point of meekness, which I suspect is an affectation. If I had to use one word to describe her, it would be prissy.”

“Any gossip floating around about said maiden?”

“Not that I have heard, although I probably wouldn’t hear it, given that we run in different circles. I do know that she’s been spending a lot of time with a young man from a family that builds airplanes.”

“The Mercers.”

“It sounds like you’ve done some homework of your own.”

“A little. Just enough to know that I don’t know very much about Cordelia Hutchinson.”

“Of course, I am dying to know why she needs the services of Nero Wolfe and his noble associate Archie Goodwin. But I don’t suppose you are going to tell me now, are you?”

“Not at the moment, but perhaps when this all gets resolved, I may share some details with you — that is, if you are nice to me.”

“When have I not been nice to you, Escamillo?”

“Point taken. I have no complaints whatever about your behavior toward me. And I do like the sound of ‘noble associate.’”

“I am certainly glad to hear that. But beware of Cordelia. She may just try to beguile you with her coy ways.”

“Heaven forbid that you should think such a thing. After all, she’s practically a child.”

“Just remember, someone once said that age knows no barriers where love is concerned.”

I promised her I would keep that in mind.