Before Midnight

Chapter 6

It was safe to assume that the floor clerk on the eighteenth floor of the Churchill would be stubborn about it, since journalists were certainly stalking the quintet, so I anticipated her by first finding Tim Evarts, the hotel’s first assistant security officer, not to be called a house dick, who owed me a little courtesy from past events. He obliged by phoning her, after I promised to set no fires and find no corpses, and all she did was look at both sides of my card and one side of me and wave me on.

Eighteen-twenty-six was about halfway down a long corridor. There was no one in sight anywhere except a chambermaid with towels, and I concluded that the city employees hadn’t invaded the hotel itself for surveillance. My first knock on the door of eighteen-twenty-six got me an invitation to come in, not too audible, and I opened the door and entered, and saw that LBA had done well by their guests. It was the fifteen-dollar size, with the twin beds headed against the wall at the left. On one of them, under the covers, was Old King Cole with a hangover, his mop of white hair tousled and his eyes sick.

I approached. “My name’s Archie Goodwin,” I told him. “From Nero Wolfe, on behalf of Lippert, Buff and Assa.” There was a chair there, and I sat. “We need to clear up a few little points about the contest.”

“Crap,” he said.

“That won’t do it,” I stated. “Not just that one word. Is the contest crap, or am I, or what?”

He shut his eyes. “I’m sick.” He opened them. “I’ll be all right tomorrow.”

“Are you too sick to talk? I don’t want to make you worse. I don’t know how serious a heart flutter is.”

“I haven’t got a heart flutter. I’ve got paroxysmal tachycardia, and it is never serious. I’d be up and around right now if it wasn’t for one thing — there are too many fools. The discomfort of paroxysmal tachycardia is increased by fear and anxiety and apprehension and nervousness, and I’ve got all of ’em on account of fools.”

He raised himself on an elbow, reached to the bed-stand for a glass of water, drank about a spoonful, and put the glass back. He bounced around and settled on his side, facing me.

“What kind of fools?” I asked politely.

“You’re one of ’em. Didn’t you come to ask me where I got the gun I shot that man Dahlmann with?”

“No, sir. Speaking for Nero Wolfe, we’re not interested in the death of Dahlmann except as it affects the contest and raises points that have to be dealt with.”

He snorted: “There you are. Crap. Why should it affect the contest at all? It happened to be last night that someone went there and shot him — some jealous woman or someone who hated him or was afraid of him or wanted to get even with him — and just because it happened last night they think it was connected with the contest. They even think one of us did it. Only a fool would think that. Suppose when he held up that paper, suppose I believed him when he said it was the answers, and I decided to kill him and get it. Finding out where he lived would have been easy enough, even the phone book. So I went there, and getting him to let me in was just as easy, I could tell him there was something about the agreement that I thought ought to be changed and I wanted to discuss it with him. Getting a chance to shoot him might be a little harder, since he might have a faint suspicion I had come to try to get the paper, but it could be managed. So I kill him and take the paper and get back to my hotel room, and where am I?”

I shook my head. “You’re telling it.”

“I’ve dug a hole and jumped in. If they go on with the contest on the basis of those answers, I’ve ruined my chances, because they’ll hold us here in the jurisdiction, or if I leave for Chicago before the body is found they’ll invite me back and I’ll have to come, and if I send in the right answers before my deadline I couldn’t explain how I got ’em. If they don’t go on with those answers, if they void them and give us new verses, all I’ve got for killing a man is the prospect of being electrocuted. So they’re fools for thinking one of us did it. Crap.”

“There’s another possibility,” I objected. “What if you were a fool yourself? I admit your analysis is absolutely sound, but what if the sight of that paper and the thought of half a million dollars carried you away, and you went ahead and did it and didn’t bother with the analysis until afterward? Then when you did realize it and saw where you were, for instance in the District Attorney’s office, I should think your heart would flutter no matter what name you gave it. I know mine would.”

He turned over on his back and shut his eyes. I sat and looked at him. He was breathing a little faster than normal, and a muscle in his neck twitched a couple of times, but there was no indication of a crisis. I had not scared him to death, and anyway, I had only promised Tim Evarts that I wouldn’t find a corpse, not that I wouldn’t make one.

He turned back on his side. “For some reason,” he said, “I feel like offering you a drink. You look a little like my son-in-law, that may be it. There’s a bottle of Scotch in my suitcase that he gave me. Help yourself. I don’t want any.”

“Thanks, but I guess not. Another time.”

“As you please. About my being a fool, I was one once, twenty-six years ago, back in nineteen-twenty-nine. I had stacked up a couple of million dollars and it all went. Fifty million others were fools along with me, but that didn’t help any. I decided I had had enough and got me a job selling adding machines, and never touched the market again. A few years ago my son-in-law made me quit work because he was doing very well as an architect, and that was all right, I was comfortable, but I always wanted something to do, and one day I saw the advertisement of this contest, and the first thing I knew I was in it up to my neck. I decided to make my daughter and son-in-law a very handsome present.”

He coughed, and shut his eyes and breathed a little, then went on. “The point is that it’s been twenty-six years since I made a fool of myself, and if you and those other fools only knew it, once was enough. There’s only one thing you can tell me that I’m interested in, and that’s this, what are they going to do about the contest? As it stands now it’s a giveaway, and I’ll fight it. That young woman, Susan Tescher — she lives here in New York and she’s a researcher for Clock magazine. She’s working on it right now — and here I am. I’ll fight it.”

“Fight it how?” I asked.

“That’s the question.” He passed his finger tips over his right cheek and then over his left one. “I haven’t shaved today. I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you one idea I had.”

“Neither do I.”

He had his eyes steady on me, and they didn’t look so sick. “You strike me as a sensible young man.”

“I am.”

“It’s just possible that Miss Tescher is a sensible young woman. If she tries to bull it through on the basis of what was agreed last night, after what has happened, she may end up by wishing she’d never heard of the damn contest. I think the rest of us might get together with her and suggest that we split it up five ways. The first five prizes total eight hundred and seventy thousand dollars, so that would make it one hundred and seventy-four thousand apiece. That ought to satisfy everybody, and I don’t see why you people would object to it. As it stands now — was that a knock at the door?”

“It sounded like it.”

“I told them I didn’t want... oh well. Come in!”

The door opened slowly and there was Carol Wheelock, without coat or hat. As I left my chair she stopped, and apparently was about to turn and scoot, but I spoke. “Hello there. Come on in.”

“Leave the door open,” Younger said.

“I’m here,” I told him.

“I know you are. With a woman in my hotel room the door stays open.”

“I shouldn’t have come.” She stood. “I should have phoned, but with all the wiretapping—”

“It’s all right.” I was moving another chair up. “Mr. Younger is resting because he had a little paroxysm, nothing serious.”

“Crap,” Younger said. “Sit down. I want to talk to you anyway.”

She still hesitated, then came on and sat. If she had eaten anything there was no noticeable result. She looked at me. “Does he know about Miss Frazee?”

I shook my head. “I hadn’t got to that yet.”

She looked at Younger. “I couldn’t reach Miss Tescher, and I wanted to speak to you before Mr. Rollins. You know Miss Frazee is the head of the Women’s Nature League. You remember it was mentioned last evening, and Mr. Dahlmann was very witty about it. He thought it would be amusing for her to win a prize, and of course she was going to, one of the first five.”

“I didn’t think he was witty,” Younger declared.

She didn’t press it. “Well, he thought he was. What I wanted to tell you, three hundred women, members of her league, have been working with Miss Frazee on the contest, and she has sent them the verses we got last night by long distance telephone, and they’re working on them now — three hundred of them.”

“Just a minute,” I put in. “As Mr. Wolfe told you, she said they helped her, but not that they have the new verses. That’s an assumption. I admit it has four legs.”

Younger had raised himself to an elbow, and the open front of his pajama top showed a hairy chest. “Three hundred women?” he demanded.

“Right. So I doubt if you can sell Miss Frazee on your plan to split it five ways. You’ll have to think up—”

“Get out!” he commanded. Not me; it was for Mrs. Wheelock. “Get out of here. I’m getting up and I haven’t got any pants on. — Wait a minute! You’ll be in your room? Stay in your room until you hear from me. I’m going to find Rollins and the three of us are going to fight. We’ll blow it so high they won’t find any pieces. Stay in your room!”

He gave the covers a kick, proving he had been right about the pants, and she ran. I looked at my watch, and took my hat from the back of the chair.

“I have an appointment,” I told him, “and anyway, you’re going to be busy.”