Death of a Demon

Chapter 6

When you mount the seven steps to the stoop and enter the hall of the old brownstone on West 35th Street, the first door on your left is to what we call the front room, with the office door farther along on that side. The walls and doors of the front room and office are soundproofed. After convoying the company to the front room and telling them they wouldn’t have to wait long, I returned to the hall, put my hat and coat on the rack, proceeded to the office, and put the box on Wolfe’s desk pad.

“Good timing,” I said. “In another hour or two they would probably have found it.”

He reached to pass his fingertips along its edge. “You haven’t opened it.”

“No. It’s a good lock. They’re in the front room, all four. I gave them their pick, you or the cops, and they preferred you. There’s nothing to add to what I told you on the phone. Before I open it I want to register a guess. Not that it’s what Hazen had on them, that’s a cinch. My guess is specifically what he had on Mrs. Oliver. She murdered her husband. Wait till you see her.”

He made a face. “This will be distasteful. Bring keys.”

I went to the cabinet at the far wall, opened a drawer, and made selections. Although I couldn’t qualify on the witness stand as a lock expert, I know a Hotchkiss from a Euler, and I can open your suitcase with a paper clip if you’ll be patient. Moving the box to my desk, I sat and started in. I had selected four types, little boxes of assortments. In three minutes I eliminated the first type, and in another three the second one. The third seemed more promising, and I was getting hot when Wolfe growled, “Get a hammer and screwdriver.”

As he spoke it clicked and I had it. I raised the lid. The box was empty. I upended it for Wolfe to see. “Yeah,” I said. “It sure is distasteful.”

He took in air, about a bushel, and let it out again. “It’s just as well. It would probably have presented us with a problem. More than one. I presume he decided it was a mistake to tell his wife of it and removed the contents. Elsewhere in the house?”

“I doubt it.”

“So do I.” He leaned back, closed his eyes, and pushed his lips out. In a moment he pulled them in, and then out and in, out and in. He was working. A minute passed, two minutes, three... He opened his eyes and straightened up. “Lock the box and leave it on your desk. Put the keys away. Have a gun in your hand when you admit them, and go to your desk and stay there. Proceed.”

I proceeded. After locking the box and returning the keys to the cabinet, I moved four of the yellow chairs up, in a row facing Wolfe’s desk, got the gun out, opened the door to the front room, and invited them to enter. The gentlemen followed the ladies. I went to my desk and pronounced names, and when they were seated I sat, with the gun in my hand resting on my thigh.

Wolfe’s eyes went right and then left. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said. “First the situation. I shall not resort to euphemism. You were being blackmailed by Mr. Hazen, either collectively — please don’t interrupt. Either collectively or separately. He had other victims, but you four alone were paying him around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, ostensibly for professional services, but that was merely a subterfuge. I don’t know whether the police know that or not, probably not, but I do. If there was any doubt it was removed when Mr. Goodwin found you in that house surreptitiously, looking for something, and you offered him a large sum of money. So much—”

“I didn’t,” Mrs. Oliver blurted. “Mr. Perdis did.”

“Pfui. You were there. Did you object? So much for that. I am acting for my client, Mrs. Hazen. She is being held under suspicion of killing her husband, and has given me certain information. This is one item: one day about a year ago her husband showed her a box, a metal box, he had in his bedroom. To show it to her he removed the bottom drawer of a chest and pried up the board the drawer slid on, and the box was underneath the board. He told her that if he died she should get the box, have it opened by a locksmith, and burn the contents without looking at them. It was to get that box that Mr. Goodwin went there this evening, with Mrs. Hazen’s key and authority. After you left the room he removed the drawer and lifted the board, and got it. It’s there on his desk.”

That was like him. I hadn’t told him that I had sent them from the room before I got it, and that they hadn’t seen it; he took it for granted. I appreciate his compliments, but some day he may overestimate me. I had no idea where or what he was headed for, but I thought a little gesture wouldn’t hurt, so I got the box with my left hand, the gun being in my right, and displayed it. Four pairs of eyes were on it, glued to it. Anne Talbot mumbled something. Perdis started up, thought better of it, and sank back. Jules Khoury muttered, “So it was there.” I had the gun, but there were four of them, so I got up, detoured around them to the safe, opened the safe door, put the box in, closed the door, and spun the knob. As I returned to my chair Wolfe was speaking.

“I have a proposal to make, but first a question or two. My objective, of course, is to demonstrate that Mrs. Hazen did not kill her husband. Yesterday evening you dined at her table. After dinner she went to her room, and soon after that Mr. Weed left. I’m not going to ask about the sequence and the times of your departures, or where you went and what you did; the police have got all that from you, and if the matter can be resolved by such details they are extremely competent at that sort of thing, and they are ahead of me, with an army. But I want to know about your conversation with Mr. Hazen after his wife and Mr. Weed left. What was said?”

“Nothing,” Khoury declared.

“Nonsense. Mr. Hazen had told his wife he was going to discuss something with you. What?”

“Nothing of any importance. He opened champagne. We discussed the stock market. He asked Mrs. Talbot what plays she had seen. He got Perdis talking about ships.”

“He talked about poisons,” Perdis said.

“He talked about his wife’s father,” Mrs. Oliver said. “He said his wife’s father was a great inventor, a genius.”

Wolfe scowled at them. “This is egregious. If he discussed some aspect of his peculiar relations with you, naturally you didn’t tell the police about it. But I know of those relations and the police don’t. I intend to know what was said.”

“You don’t understand, Mr. Wolfe.” It was Anne Talbot. She was leaning forward, appealing to him. “You didn’t know him. He was a monster. He was a demon. He didn’t want to discuss anything, he just wanted to have us there together, and we had to go. It was his special kind of torture. He wanted each of us to know about the others and to know that the others knew about us. He liked to see us trying to act as if it were just a... just a dinner party. You didn’t know him.”

“He was a devil,” Perdis said.

Wolfe surveyed them. “Did he reveal to any of you the nature of his hold on the others, last evening or any other time? Or hint at it?”

Anne Talbot and Khoury shook their heads. Mrs. Oliver said, “No, oh, no.” Perdis said, “I think he hinted. For instance, poison. I thought he hinted.”

“But no particulars?”

“No.”

“I must concede that he was not an estimable man. Very well, he is dead, and here we are. As I said, I have a proposal. It is highly likely, all but certain, that he kept in that box whatever support he had for his demands on you. The box is in my safe. I don’t desire or intend to inspect its contents. But Mrs. Hazen is my client and I am committed to protect both her person and her property. She is not bound to follow her husband’s instructions to burn the contents of the box, and it would be quixotic to destroy anything so valuable. I will surrender it to you, you four, for one million dollars.”

They gawked at him.

“That’s a large sum, but it is not exorbitant. In another seven years, if Mr. Hazen had lived, you would have paid him more than that, and that wouldn’t have ended it. This will; this will be final. If I left it to you to apportion the burden you would probably haggle, and time is short; so I shall expect one quarter of the million from each of you, either in currency or certified checks, within twenty-four hours. There is no question of extortion by Mrs. Hazen or me; we haven’t seen the contents of the box; I only say, as her agent, you may have them at that price if you want them.”

“You haven’t opened the box,” Perdis said.

“No, I haven’t.”

“What if it’s empty?”

“You get nothing and you pay nothing.” Wolfe looked up at the clock. “The box will be opened here tomorrow at midnight, with all of you present, or earlier if and when you meet the terms. If it is empty, so much for that. If it isn’t, there will of course be a difficulty. None of you will want the others to inspect the items that pertain to him. I don’t want to look at any of them. I suggest that Mr. Goodwin, who is thoroughly discreet, may remove the items singly, examine each one only enough to determine whom it applies to, and hand it over. If you have a better procedure to suggest, do so.”

Mrs. Oliver was licking her lips and swallowing, by turns. Perdis was hunched over, his lips tight, his heavy broad shoulders rising and falling with his breathing. Khoury had his chin up, his narrowed eyes aimed at Wolfe past the tip of his long thin nose. Anne Talbot’s eyes were closed, and a muscle at the side of her pretty neck was twitching.

“I realize,” Wolfe said, “that it may not be easy to produce so large a sum in so short a time, but it is not impossible, and I dare not give you longer. While it is true that the box and its contents are the property of Mrs. Hazen, the police would no doubt regard it as evidential in their investigation of a murder, and I can’t undertake to withhold my knowledge of it longer than twenty-four hours.” He pushed his chair back and rose. “I shall await your pleasure.”

But if he was through they weren’t. Mrs. Oliver wanted the box opened then and there, and a display of its contents by me. Khoury said that there was a question of extortion, that they were being told to fork over a million dollars in twenty-four hours or else. Perdis demanded that they be given the time and opportunity to talk with Mrs. Hazen, but of course she was in the coop. Anne Talbot was the only one who had nothing to say; she was on her feet, gripping the back of the chair, the muscle in her neck still twitching. Thinking it might help if I went and brought their coats, I did so, and it took Anne Talbot three tries to find the armhole.

When they were out, and the door shut, and I returned to the office, Wolfe was out from behind his desk. “A notion,” I said. “Mrs. Hazen may be out on bail by the middle of the morning and accessible to them, and you’re up in the plant rooms until eleven o’clock, not to be disturbed. Even if she’s locked up, those people have lawyers and connections, Perdis especially. He may play poker with the DA. I could phone Parker to see her in the morning and tell her that no matter what she hears you’re not loony, you’re just a genius, and you know where you’re headed for even when nobody else does, including me.”

“Not necessary.” He went to the door and turned. “Make sure that the safe’s locked. I’m tired. Good night.”

He knows darned well that I always make sure the safe’s locked, but of course it doesn’t often have something in it that’s supposed to be worth a million bucks. Up in my room on the third floor, as I undressed I made assorted tries at deciding what was next on his program, and didn’t like any of them.

As it turned out the next thing on the program wasn’t decided either by me or by him, but by Inspector Cramer. In the morning Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock as usual, and also as usual I had the mail opened and the dusting done and fresh water in the vase on his desk. He went first to the front of the desk to put a spray of orchids in the vase, Odontoglossum pyramus, then circled around to his chair. As he sat the doorbell rang. I went to the office door for a look and told him it was Cramer. He slapped a palm on the desk, glared at me, and said nothing, and I went to the front and opened up. I didn’t like the look on Cramer’s face as he entered and let me take his coat and hat. He almost grinned at me, and he didn’t stride to the office, he just walked. He sat in the red leather chair, crossed his legs comfortably, and told Wolfe, “I haven’t got much time. I want to hear it from you, what Mrs. Hazen came to you for yesterday, just the substance, and then Goodwin will come downtown and get it down in a statement, all of it. With his wonderful memory.”

Wolfe was glowering at him. “Mr. Cramer. It shouldn’t be—”

“Save it. She’s booked for murder. We have the gun. Hazen got his car from the garage Monday night. It has been found parked on Twenty-first Street. There was a gun in the dashboard compartment, and it fired the bullet that killed him. We have traced it. It was bought by Hazen six years ago and he had a permit for it. He kept it in a drawer in his bedroom, and the maid saw it there yesterday morning when she went up to see why he hadn’t come down for breakfast. Don’t ask me why Mrs. Hazen took it from there afterwards and went to where she had parked the car on Twenty-first Street and put it in the car. I don’t know, but maybe you do. So let’s hear you.”