Gambit

3

In his own little room on the twentieth floor of the Gazette building, which had LON COHEN on the door but no title, two doors down the hall from the corner office of the publisher, Lon cradled the phone, one of three on his desk, turned to me, and said, “You may be in time for the twilight if it’s a quickie. Front page?”

I slumped and crossed my legs, showing that there was plenty of time. I shook my head. “Not even the second section. I’m just looking for scraps that may not be fit to print. About Paul Jerin and the Gambit Club.”

“You don’t say.” He ran a palm over his hair, which was almost black and slicked back and up over his sloping dome. I knew that gesture well, but had learned the hard way not to try to interpret it. He was next to the best of the poker players I spent one night a week with, the best being Saul Panzer, whom you will meet later on. He asked, “Doing research for a treatise on adult delinquency?”

“All I would need for that would be a mirror. Nero Wolfe is inquiring into certain aspects of the matter.”

“Well well. Just for curiosity?”

“No. He has a client.”

“The hell he has. For release when?”

“Oh, tomorrow.”

“Who’s the client?”

“I don’t know. He won’t tell me.”

“I’ll bet he won’t.” Lon leaned forward. “Now look, Archie. It’s basic. In a newspaper sentences must always be active, never passive. You can’t say ‘Mr. Kaczynski was bitten by a woman today.’ You must say ‘Miss Mabel Flum bit Mr. Kaczynski today.’ The lead-off on this must be, ‘Daniel Kalmus, attorney for Matthew Blount, has engaged Nero Wolfe to get evidence that Blount did not murder Paul Jerin.’ Then further along mention the fact that Wolfe is the greatest detective this side of outer space and has never failed to deliver, with the invaluable assistance of the incomparable Archie Goodwin. That’s the way to do it.”

I was grinning at him. “I like it. Then the next day you could feature Kalmus’s denial.”

“Are you saying it’s not Kalmus?”

“I’m not saying. What the hell, it’s just as good, even better, leaving it open who hired him, hinting that you know but you’re not telling. Next day they’ll buy a million Gazettes to find out.”

“Are you going to fill it in any? Now?”

“No. Not a word. Just that he’s been hired and has been paid a retainer.”

“Can we say we have it direct from you?”

“Sure.”

He turned and got at a phone, the green one. It didn’t take long, since he only had enough for one short paragraph. He hung up and turned to me. “Just in time. Now for tomorrow’s follow-up. I don’t expect words and music, but what’s the slant that makes Wolfe think—”

“Whoa.” I showed him a palm. “You’ve got the gall of a journalist. It’s my turn. I want everything about everybody that you know or guess but haven’t printed.”

“That would take all night. First, off the record, does Wolfe actually expect to spring Blount?”

“Off the record, that’s the idea.” I had my notebook out. “Now. Have they found a container with arsenic in it?”

“I’ll be damned.” His head was cocked. “Does Wolfe know that Blount went down to the kitchen for the chocolate and took it up to Jerin?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know that after Jerin had drunk most of the chocolate Blount took the cup and pot away and rinsed them out?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know that Blount chased Jerin out of his apartment and told him to stay away from his daughter?”

“No. Do you?”

“I couldn’t prove it, but the word is that the cops can. And one of our men got it — a good man, Al Proctor — he got it from a friend of Jerin’s. Do you want to talk to Proctor?”

“No. What for? That would only help on a motive for Blount, and since Blount’s innocent why waste time on it? Have they—”

“I will be damned. My God, Archie this is hot! Come on, give! Off the record until you say the word. Have I ever fudged on you?”

“No, and you won’t now. Skip it, Lon. Nothing doing. Have they found a container?”

He reached for a phone, sat a moment with his fingers on it, vetoed it, and settled back. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. If they had I think one of our men would know.”

“Did Jerin know or suspect he had been poisoned?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gazette men must have talked with men who were there.”

“Sure, but the last four hours, at the hospital, only doctors and nurses were with him and they don’t talk.”

“At the club, Jerin didn’t point to someone and say, ‘You did this, you bastard’?”

“No. If he had, whom should he have pointed to?”

“I’ll tell you later. Not today. Who went to the hospital? I know Dr. Avery went in the ambulance, and Blount went. Who else?”

“Three of the club members. One of them was Kalmus, the lawyer. I can get the names of the other two if you want them.”

“Not unless it was Hausman or Yerkes or Farrow.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Then don’t bother. What’s the talk in the trade? I’ve heard this and that, at the Flamingo and around, but I don’t see much of journalists except you. What are they saying? Have they got angles?”

“None that you would like. Of course there were plenty of angles the first few days, but not since they took Blount. Now the big question is did Jerin lay Sally or didn’t he. That wouldn’t interest you.”

“Not a particle. Then they all think Blount’s wrapped up? No minority opinion?”

“None worth mentioning. That’s why this from you, and Wolfe, is a bomb. Now there will be angles.”

“Fine. So there’s been no interest in anyone else since Blount was charged, but how about before that? The four messengers. Hausman, Yerkes, Farrow, Kalmus. You must have got quite a collection of facts you didn’t print.”

He eyed me exactly the way he eyed me when I took another look at my hole card, lifted one brow, and raised him the limit. “I’d give more than a nickel,” he said, “I’d give a shiny new dime, to know which one of them you want to know about. Damn it, we could help. We have our share of beetle-brains, but also there’s a couple of good men. At your service.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Send me their names and phone numbers. Tell them not to call me, I’ll call them. Now tell me about the messengers. Start with Kalmus.”

He told me. Not only what he had in his head; he sent for the files. I filled eight pages of my notebook with the most useless-looking conglomeration of facts you could imagine. Of course you never know; Wolfe had once been able to crack a very hard nut only because Fred Durkin had reported that a certain boy had bought bubble gum at two different places, but there’s no point in bothering to tell you that Yerkes had been a halfback at Yale or that Farrow had a habit of getting bounced out of night clubs. I’ll keep it to a minimum:

Ernst Hausman, seventy-two, retired but still owner of a half interest in a big Wall Street firm, was a widower with no children, no friends (Blount didn’t count?), and no dogs. His obsession with chess was common knowledge. Owned the finest collection of chessmen in the world, some two hundred sets, one of Imperial jade, white and green.

Morton Farrow, thirty-one, single, lived at the Blount apartment on Fifth Avenue (not mentioned by Sally). He was an assistant vice-president of the Blount Textiles Corporation. Had got a ticket for speeding the night of January thirtieth, the night of the affair at the Gambit Club.

Charles W. Yerkes, forty-four, senior vice-president of the Continental Bank and Trust Company, was married and had two children. At the age of twenty-six he had come out eleventh in a field of fourteen in the annual tournament for the United States chess championship, and had entered no tournament since.

Daniel Kalmus, fifty-one, prominent corporation lawyer, a partner in the firm of McKinney, Best, Kalmus, and Green, was a widower, with four children, all married. One of the club members had told a Gazette reporter that he had been surprised that Kalmus had been a messenger instead of playing, because he thought that Kalmus, the club’s best player, could have beaten Jerin.

And so forth. While I was going through the files Lon made a couple of phone calls and received a couple, but he kept me in a corner of his eye. Presumably the idea was that if Wolfe was particularly interested in one of that quartet I might show it by a flicker of the eye or a twist of the lip. Not wanting to disappoint him, I eased a slip of paper out and slipped it up my cuff, and later, when I put the folders back on his desk, he asked, “Would you like a copy of the item in your sleeve?”

“All right, I tried,” I said, and fingered it out and forked it over. All it had on it, scribbled in pencil, was 2/8 11:40 A.M. LC says MJN says too much chess A.R. I said, “If LC means Lon Cohen that may settle it.”

“Go climb a tree.” He dropped it in the wastebasket. “Anything else?”

“A few little details. What’s Sally Blount like?”

“I thought Blount was out of it.”

“He is, but she may have some facts we need, and it’ll help to know what to expect when I see her. Is she a man-eater?”

“No. Of course she’s still an angle with us, and presumably with the cops. With most girls of her age and class you’ll find a little dirt, sometimes a lot, if you dig, but apparently not with her. She seems to be clean, which should be newsworthy but isn’t. We have nothing on her, even with Paul Jerin, and I doubt if the cops have.”

“College?”

“Bennington. Graduated last year.”

“How about her mother? Of course she’s not an angle, but she may have some facts too. Know anything about her?”

“I sure do. I’ve told my wife that she needn’t wonder what I’ll do if she dies. I’ll get Anna Blount. I don’t know how, but I’ll get her.”

“So you know her?”

“I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen her a few times, and once is enough. Don’t ask me why. It’s not just looks or the call of the glands. She’s probably a witch and doesn’t know it. If she knew it it would show, and that would spoil it. As you say, she’s not an angle, but, with her husband arrested for murder, she’s news, and it appears that I’m not the only one. She attracts. She pulls.”

“And?”

“Apparently there is no and. Apparently she’s clean too. It’s hard to believe, but I’d like to believe it. As you know, I’m happily married, and my wife is healthy, and I hope she lives forever, but it’s nice to know that such a one as Anna Blount is around just in case. I can’t understand why I don’t dream about her. What the hell, a man’s dreams are private. If you see her be sure to tell me how you take it.”

“Glad to.” I rose. “I’m not thanking you this time because I gave more than I got.”

“I want more. Damn it, Archie, just a little something for tomorrow?”

I told him he would get more if and when there was more, got my coat and hat from the other chair, and went.

I walked downtown. That would have been ideal for arranging my mind, my legs working, my lungs taking in plenty of good cold air, and a few snowflakes coming at me and then away from me, if there had been anything in my mind to arrange. Even worse, my mind was refusing to cooperate on the main point. I had bought the assumption that Matthew Blount was innocent, but my mind hadn’t. It kept trying to call my attention to the known facts, which was subversive.

Headed south on Sixth Avenue, my watch said 4:30 as I approached Thirty-fifth Street, and instead of turning I continued downtown. Wolfe wouldn’t come down from the plant rooms until six o’clock, and there was no point in going home just to sit at my desk and try to get my mind on something useful when there was nothing useful to get it on. So I kept going, clear to Twelfth Street, turned left, stopped half way down the long block, and focused on a four-story brick building, painted gray with green trim, across the street. A brass plate to the right of the door, nice and shiny, said GAMBIT CLUB. I crossed the street, entered the vestibule, tried the door, but it was locked, pushed the button, got a click, opened the door, and entered.

Of course I was just kidding my mind. There wasn’t a chance in a million that I would get any new facts for it to switch to, but at least I could show it that I was in charge. There was a long rack in the hall, and, as I disposed of my coat and hat, a man appeared in an open doorway on the right and said, “Yes, sir?”

It was Bernard Nash, the steward. There had been a picture of him in the Gazette. He was tall and narrow with a long sad face. I said, “I’m checking something,” and made for the doorway, but without giving me room to pass he asked, “Are you from the police?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a gorilla. How often do you have to see a face?”

He would probably have asked to see my buzzer if I hadn’t kept moving, and I brushed against him as I went through. It was the big room. Evidently the chess tables had been specially placed for the affair, for there were now more than a dozen — more like two dozen — and three of them were in use, with a couple of kibitzers at one. Halting only for a quick glance around, I headed for an open door at the rear end, followed by the steward. If Table Six, Blount’s, had been in the row at the left wall, he had been sitting only ten feet from the door to the library.

The library was almost small enough to be called cozy, with four leather chairs, each with a reading light and a stand with an ashtray. Book shelves lined two walls and part of a third. In a corner was a chess table with a marble top, with yellow and brown marble for the squares, and the men spread around, not on their home squares. The Gazette had said that the men were of ivory and Kokcha lapis lazuli and they and the table had belonged to and been played with by Louis XIV, and that the men were kept in the position after the ninth move of Paul Morphy’s most famous game, his defeat of the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard in Paris in 1858.

The couch was backed up to the left wall, but there was no table, just stands at the ends. I looked at Nash. “You’ve moved the table.”

“Certainly.” Since I was just a cop, so he thought, no “sir” was required. “We were told things could be moved.”

“Yeah, the inspector would, with members in the high brackets. If it had been a dump he’d have kept it sealed for a month. Has your watch got a second hand?”

He glanced at his wrist. “Yes.”

“All right, time me. I’m checking. I’m going down to the kitchen and coming right back. I’ll time it too, but two watches are better than one. When I say ‘go.’ ” I looked at my watch. “Go.” I moved.

There were only two doors besides the one we had entered by, and one of them was to the hall, and near the other one, at the far end, was a little door that had to be to an old-fashioned dumb-waiter shaft. Crossing to it — not the dumb-waiter — I opened it and stepped through. There was a small landing and stairs down, narrow and steep. Descending, I was in the kitchen, larger than you would expect, and nothing old-fashioned about it. Stainless steel and fluorescent lights. A round little bald guy in a white apron, perched on a stool with a magazine, squinted at me and muttered, “My God, another one.”

“We keep the best till the last.” I was brusque. “You’re Laghi?”

“Call me Tony. Why not?”

“I don’t know you well enough.” I turned and mounted the stairs. In the library, Nash, who apparently hadn’t moved, looked at his watch and said, “One minute and eighteen seconds.”

I nodded. “Close enough. You said in your statement that when Blount went down the first time to get the chocolate he was in the kitchen about six minutes.”

“That’s wrong. I said about three minutes. If you don’t — Oh. You’re trying to — I see. I know what I said in my statement.”

“Good. So do I.” I went to the door to the big room, on through, and to the table where the game had a couple of kibitzers. Neither they nor the players gave me a glance as I arrived. More than half of the men were still on the board. One of Black’s knights was attacked by a pawn, and I raised a brow when he picked up a rook to move it, but then I saw that the white pawn was pinned. Nash’s voice came from behind my shoulder. “This man is a police officer, Mr. Carruthers.” No eyes came to me, not an eye. White, evidently Mr. Carruthers, said without moving his head, “Don’t interrupt, Nash. You know better.”

A fascinating game if it fascinates you. With nothing better to do, I stuck with it for half an hour, deciding for both White and Black what the next move should be, and made a perfect record. Wrong every time. When Black moved a rook to where a knight could take it, but with a discovered check by a bishop which I hadn’t seen, I conceded I would never be a Botvinnik or even a Paul Jerin and went to the hall for my hat and coat. The only words that had passed had been when White had pushed a pawn and Black had murmured, “I thought you would,” and White had murmured, “Obvious.”

It was snowing harder, but there were still twenty minutes before six o’clock, so I walked some more. As for my mind, I told it that it now had some new data to work on, since I had shown it the scene of the crime and had even established the vital fact that it took seventy-eight seconds to go down to the kitchen and back up, but it wasn’t interested. Around Eighteenth Street I gave up and began to look at people going by. Girls are better looking in snowstorms, especially at night.

When I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone and used my key I found that the bolt wasn’t on, so I didn’t have to push the button for Fritz. Shaking the snow off my coat and hat before entering, putting them on the hall rack, and proceeding to the office, the only greeting I got was a sidewise glance. Wolfe was at his desk with his current book, African Genesis, by Robert Ardrey. Crossing to my desk, I sat and picked up the late edition of the Gazette. We have three copies delivered, one for Wolfe, one for Fritz, and one for me. It was on the front page, the first item under LATE BULLETINS.

Wolfe must have been on a long paragraph, for a full minute passed before he looked up and spoke.

“It’s snowing?”

“Yes. And blowing some.”

His eyes went back to the book. “I hate to interrupt,” I said, “but I might forget to mention it later. I saw Lon Cohen. He got it in today, as you may have noticed.”

“I haven’t looked. Did you get anything useful?”

“Not useful to me. Possibly to you.” I got my notebook from my pocket.

“Doubtful. You have a nose.” He went back to his book.

I gave him time for another paragraph. “Also I went and had a look at the Gambit Club.”

No comment.

“I know,” I said, “that that book is extremely interesting. As you told me at lunch, it tells what happened in Africa a hundred thousand years ago, and I realize that that is more important than what is happening here now. My talk with Lon can wait, and all I did at the Gambit Club, besides taking a look at the couch Jerin sat on, was watch a game of chess, but you told Miss Blount you would let her know who you want to see first. If you expect her to get someone here this evening I ought to phone her now.”

He grunted. “It isn’t urgent. It’s snowing.”

“Yeah. It may clear up by the time the trial starts. Don’t you think?”

“Confound it, don’t badger me!”

So he was phutzing. Since one of my most important functions is needling him when his aversion to work takes control, it was up to me, but the trouble was my mind. Showing it the scene of the crime had accomplished nothing. If I couldn’t sick it onto the job how could I expect to sick him? I got up and went to the kitchen to ask Fritz if there had been any phone calls, though I knew there hadn’t, since there had been no note on my desk.

However, there were three calls in the next hour, before dinner, and two during dinner — the Times, the Daily News, and the Post, and two of the networks, CBS and NBC. With all of them I confirmed the item in the Gazette and told them we had nothing to add. The News was sore because I had given it to the Gazette, and of course the Times tried to insist on speaking with Wolfe. When the last trumpet sounds the Times will want to check with Gabriel himself, and for the next edition will try to get it confirmed by even Higher Authority.

I had returned to the dining room after dealing with CBS, to deal with my second helping of papaya custard, when the doorbell rang. During meals Fritz answers it. He came from the kitchen, went down the hall to the front, and in a minute came back, entered, and said, “Mr. Ernst Hausman. He said you would know the name.”

Wolfe looked at me, not as a friend or even a trusted assistant. “Archie. This is your doing.”

I swallowed custard. “No, sir. Yours. The Gazette. I merely followed instructions. You said the murderer might think it necessary to do something, and here he is.”

“Pfui. Through a blizzard?”

He really meant it. On a fine day he would venture out to risk his life in the traffic only on a strictly personal errand, and this was night and snow was falling. “He had to,” I said. “With you on it he knew he was done for and he came to confess.” I pushed my chair back and left it. A man coming without an appointment before we had had our coffee — he was capable of telling Fritz to tell him to come tomorrow morning.

“Okay, Fritz,” I said, “I’ll do it.”