Before Midnight

Chapter 16

By four o’clock everybody was set for the evening party with one exception. Wheelock, Younger, Buff, and Heery had been reminded. O’Garro, Assa, Rollins, and Hansen didn’t need to be. As for Susan Tescher, Hibbard had called and said she would be present provided he could come along, and I said we’d be glad to have him. The exception was Gertrude Frazee. I tried her five times after lunch, three times from the kitchen and twice from my room, and didn’t get her.

When, at four o’clock, Fritz and I heard Wolfe’s elevator ascending to the roof, we went to the office and made some preliminary preparations. There would be ten of them, eleven if I got Frazee, so chairs had to be brought from the front room and dining room. Wolfe had said there should be refreshments, so a table had to be placed at the end of the couch, covered with a yellow linen cloth, with napkins and other accessories. Fritz had already started on canapés and other snacks and filling the vacuum bucket with ice cubes. There was no need to check the supply of liquids, since Wolfe does that himself at least once a week. He hates to have anybody, even a policeman or a woman, ask for something he hasn’t got. When we had things under control Fritz returned to the kitchen and I went to my desk and got at the phone for another try for Frazee.

By gum, I got her, no trouble at all. Her own voice, and she admitted she remembered me. She was a little frosty, asking me what I wanted, but I overlooked it.

“I’m calling,” I said, “to ask you to join us at a gathering at Mr. Wolfe’s office at nine o’clock this evening. The other contestants will be here, and Mr. Heery, and members of the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa.”

“What’s it for?”

“To discuss the situation as it stands now. Since the contestants have received a list of the answers from some unknown source, there must be—”

“I haven’t received any answers from any source, known or unknown. I’m expecting word Wednesday morning from my friends at home, and I’ll have my answers in by the deadline. I’ve heard enough of this trick.”

She was gone.

I cradled the phone, sat and gave it a thought, buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and got Wolfe.

“Do you want Miss Frazee here tonight?” I asked him.

“I want all of them here. I said so.”

“Yeah, I heard you. Then I’ll have to go get her. She just told me on the phone that she hasn’t received any answers and she’s heard enough of this trick. And hung up. If she’s clean, she tore up the envelope and paper and flushed them down the toilet, and she’s standing pat. Do you want her?”

“Yes. Phone again?”

“No good. She’s not in a mood to chat.”

“Then you’ll have to go.”

I said okay, went to the kitchen to ask Fritz to come and bolt after me, got my hat and coat, and left.

The clock above the bank of elevators at the Churchill said five-seventeen. On the way up in the taxi I had considered three different approaches and hadn’t cared much for any of them, so my mind was occupied and I didn’t notice the guy who entered the elevator just before the door closed and backed up against me. But when he got out at the eighteenth, as I did, and crossed over to the floor clerk and told her, “Miss Frazee, eighteen-fourteen,” I took a look and recognized him. It was Bill Lurick of the Gazette, who is assigned to milder matters than homicide only when there are no homicides on tap. I thought, By God, she’s been croaked, and stepped on it to catch up with him, on his way down the hall, and told him hello.

He stopped. “Hi, Goodwin. You in on this? What’s up?”

“Search me. I’m taking magazine subscriptions. What brought you?”

“Always cagey. The subtle elusive type. Not me, ask me a question I answer it.” He moved on. “We got word that Miss Gertrude Frazee would hold a press conference.”

Of course that was a gag, but when we turned the corner and came to eighteen-fourteen, and I got a look inside through the open door, it wasn’t. There were three males and one female in sight, and I knew two of them: Al Riordan of the Associated Press and Missy Coburn of the World-Telegram. Lurick asked a man standing just inside if he had missed anything, and the man said no, she insisted on waiting until the Times got there, and Lurick said that was proper, they wouldn’t start Judgment Day until the Times was set to cover. A man approached down the hall and exchanged greetings, and entered, and somebody said, “All right, Miss Frazee. This is Charles Winston of the Times.”

Her voice came: “The New York Times?”

“Correct. All others are imitations. Do you think one of the contestants killed Louis Dahlmann?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” I couldn’t see her, but she kept her voice up and spoke distinctly. “I asked you to come here because the American public ought to know, especially American women, that a gigantic swindle is being perpetrated. I have been accused by three people of getting a list of the contest answers in the mail, and it’s not true. They say the other contestants got lists of the answers too, and I don’t know whether they did or not, but they have no right to accuse me. It’s an insult to American women. It’s a trick to wreck the contest and get out of paying the prizes to those who have earned them, and it’s a despicable thing to do. And it’s me they want to cheat. They’re afraid of all the publicity the Women’s Nature League is getting at last, they’re afraid American women will begin to listen to our great message—”

“Excuse me, Miss Frazee. We need the facts. Who are the three people that accused you?”

“One was a policeman, not in uniform, I don’t know his name. One was a man named Hansen, a lawyer, I think his first name is Rudolph, he represents the contest people. The third was a man named Goodwin, Archie Goodwin, he works for that detective, Nero Wolfe. They’re all in it together. It’s a dirty conspiracy to—”

I had my notebook out, along with the journalists, chiefly for the novelty of participating in a press conference without paying dues to the American Newspaper Guild, and I got it all down, but I doubt if it’s worth passing on. It developed into a seesaw. She wanted to concentrate on the Women’s Nature League, of which they had already had several doses, and they wanted to know about the alleged list of answers received by the contestants, which would have rated the front page on account of its bearing on the murder if they could nail it down. But they couldn’t very well get the nail from her, since she was claiming she had never got such a list and knew nothing about it. They kept working on her anyway until Lurick suddenly exclaimed, “Hey, Goodwin’s right here!” and headed for the door.

Instead of retreating, I crossed the sill and got my back against the open door, since the main point was to make sure that it didn’t get closed with me on the wrong side. They all came at me and hemmed me in so that I didn’t have elbow room to put my notebook in my pocket, all demanding to know if the contestants had received a list of the answers, and if so, when and how and from whom?

I regarded them as friends. It is always best to regard journalists as friends if they are not actually standing on your nose. “Hold everything,” I said. “What kind of a position is a man in when he is being tugged in two directions?”

Charles Winston of the Times said, “Anomalous.”

“Thanks. That’s the word I wanted. I would love to get my name in the paper, and my employer’s name, Nero Wolfe, spelled with an e on the end, and this is a swell chance, but I’ll have to pass it up. As you all saw at once, if the contestants have been sent a list of the answers by somebody it would be a hot item in a murder case, and it would be improper for me to tell you about it. That’s the function of the police and the District Attorney.”

“Oh, come off it, Archie,” Missy Coburn said.

“Spit out the gum,” Bill Lurick said.

“Is it your contention,” Charles Winston of the Times asked courteously but firmly, “that a private citizen should refuse to furnish the press with any information regarding a murder case and that the sole source of such information for the public should be the duly constituted authorities?”

I didn’t want to get the Times sore. “Listen, folks,” I said, “there is a story to be had, but you’re not going to get it from me, for reasons which I reserve for the present, so don’t waste time and breath on me. Try Inspector Cramer or the DA’s office. You heard Miss Frazee mention Rudolph Hansen, the lawyer. I’ve told you there’s a story, so that’s settled, but you’ll have to take it from there. Cigarettes on my bare toes will get you no more from me.”

They hung on some, but pretty soon one of them broke away and headed down the hall, and of course the others didn’t want him to gobble it so they made after him. I stayed in the doorway until the last of them had disappeared around the corner, then, leaving the door open, turned and went on in. Gertrude Frazee, in the same museum outfit she had worn five days previously, minus the hat, was in an upholstered armchair backed up against the wall, with a cold eye on me.

She spoke. “I have nothing to say to you. You can go. Please shut the door.”

I had forgotten that her lips moving at right angles to their slant, and her jaw moving straight up and down, made an anomalous situation, and I had to jerk my attention to her words. “You must admit one thing, Miss Frazee,” I said earnestly. “I didn’t try to spoil your press conference, did I? I kept out of it, and when they came at me what did I do? I refused to tell them a single thing, because I thought it wouldn’t be fair to you. It was your conference and I had no right to horn in.”

She didn’t thaw any. “What do you want?”

“Nothing now, I guess. I was going to explain why I thought you might want to come to the meeting this evening at Mr. Wolfe’s office, but now I suppose you wouldn’t be interested.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve already got your lick in. Not only that, you’ve spilled the beans. Outsiders weren’t supposed to know about the meeting, especially not the press, but now those reporters will be after everybody, and they’re sure to find out, and they’ll be camping on Mr. Wolfe’s stoop. I wouldn’t be surprised if they even got invited in. The others will know they’ve heard your side of the story, and naturally they’ll want to get theirs in too. So if you were there it might get into a wrangle in front of the reporters, and you wouldn’t want that. Anyhow, as I say, you’ve already got your lick in.”

With her unique facial design nothing could be certain, but I was pretty sure I had her, so I finished, “So I guess you wouldn’t be interested and I’ve made the trip for nothing. Sorry to bother you. If you care at all to know what happens at the meeting, see the morning papers, especially the Times.” I was turning to go.

Her voice halted me. “Young man.”

I faced her.

“What time is this meeting?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Sure, Miss Frazee, if you want to, but under the circumstances I doubt—”

“I’ll be there.”

I grinned at her. “I promised my grandmother I’d never argue with a lady. See you later then.”

Leaving, I took the door along, pulling it shut gently until the lock clicked.

By the time I got home it was after six and Wolfe should have been down from the plant rooms, but he wasn’t. I went to the kitchen, where Fritz was arranging two plump ducklings on the rack of a roasting pan, asked what was up, and was told that Wolfe had descended from the roof but had left the elevator one flight up and gone to his room. That was unusual but not alarming, and I proceeded with another step of the preparations for the meeting. When I got through the table at the end of the couch in the office was ready for business: eight brands of whisky, two of gin, two of cognac, a decanter of port, cream sherry, armagnac, four fruit brandies, and a wide assortment of cordials and liqueurs. The dry sherry was in the refrigerator, as were the cherries, olives, onions, and lemon peel, where they would remain until after dinner. As I was arranging the bottles I caught myself wondering which one the murderer would fancy, but corrected it hastily to wallet thief, since we weren’t interested in the murder.

At six-thirty I thought I’d better find out if Wolfe had busted a shoestring or what, and, mounting a flight and tapping on his door and hearing him grunt, entered. I stopped and stared. Fully dressed, with his shoes on, he was lying on the bed, on top of the black silk coverlet. Absolutely unheard of.

“What have you got?” I demanded.

“Nothing,” he growled.

“Shall I get Doc Vollmer?”

“No.”

I approached for a close-up. He looked sour, but he had never died of that. “Miss Frazee is coming,” I told him. “She was holding a press conference. Do you want to hear about it?”

“No.”

“Excuse me for disturbing you,” I said icily, and turned to go, but in three steps he called my name and I halted. He raised himself to his elbows, swung his legs over the edge, got upright, and took a deep breath.

“I’ve made a bad mistake,” he said.

I waited.

He took another breath. “What time is it?”

I told him twenty-five to seven.

“Two hours and a half and dinner to eat. I was confident that this development would of itself supply me with ample material for an effective stratagem, and I was wrong. I don’t say I was an ass. I relied overmuch on my ingenuity and resourcefulness, though on the solid basis of experience. But I did make a mistake. Various people have been trying to see me all afternoon, and I have declined to see them. I thought I could devise a stroke without any hint or stimulant from them, but I haven’t. I should have seen them. Oh, I can proceed; I am not without expedients; I may even bring something off; but I blundered. Just now you asked me if I wanted to hear about Miss Frazee, and I said no. That was fatuous. Tell me.”

“Yes, sir. As I said, she was holding a press conference. When I got there—”

The sound of the doorbell came up and in to us. I lifted my brows at Wolfe. He snapped at me, “Go! Anybody!”