Murder By The Book

13

BLANCHE DUKE surprised me that evening. She had two shots of her special formula - gin, vermouth, grenadine, and Pernod - before dinner, and then quit. No more. Also she wore a nice simple blue dress and went easy with cosmetics. Also, most important, she could dance much better than Sue Dondero. On the whole, while she was not something for the Bobolink to stare at, she certainly needed no excuses, and she made the Bobolink band seem even better than it was. By ten o'clock I would have been perfectly willing to split the check with our client. But I was there on business.

When we went back to our table after I had fancied up a samba all I could and she had kept with me as though we had done it a hundred times, and I insisted that with dinner only a memory it was time for a drink, she refused.

"Look," I objected, "this isn't going right. All I'm getting out of it is a good time, when I'm supposed to be working. The idea was to get you lit enough to loosen up, and you're drinking water. How can I get you babbling if you won't drink?"

"I like to dance," she stated.

"No wonder, the way you do it. So do I, but I've got a problem. I've got to quit enjoying myself and drag something out of you."

She shook her head. "I don't drink when I'm dancing because I like to dance. Try me tomorrow afternoon while I'm washing my hair. I hate washing my damn hair. What makes you think there's something in me to drag out?"

Our waiter was hovering, and I appeased him with an order for something.

"Well," I told her, "there ought to be, since you think O'Malley killed Dykes. You must have some reason -"

"I don't think that."

"You said you did Wednesday evening."

She waved a hand. "It gets Eleanor Gruber's goat. She's crazy about O'Malley. I don't think that at all. I think Len Dykes committed suicide."

"Oh. Whose goat does that get?"

"Nobody's. It might get Sue's, but I like her, so I don't say it, I just think it."

"Sue Dondero? Why her?"

"Well -" Blanche frowned. "Of course you didn't know Len Dykes."

"No."

"He was a funny duck. He was a nice guy in a way, but he was funny. He had inhibitions about women, but he carried a picture of one in his wallet, and who do you think it was? His sister, for God's sake! Then one day I saw him -"

She stopped abruptly. The band had struck up a conga. Her shoulders moved to the beat. There was only one thing to do. I stood up and extended a hand, and she came, and we edged through to the floor. A quarter of an hour later we returned to the table, sat, and exchanged glances of unqualified approval.

"Let's get the dragging over with," I suggested, "and then we can do some serious dancing. You were saying that one day you saw Dykes - doing what?"

She looked blank a moment, then nodded. "Oh, yes. Do we really have to go on with this?"

"I do."

"Okay. I saw him looking at Sue. Brother, that was a look! I kidded him about it, which was a mistake, because it made him decide to pick me to tell about it. It was the first time -"

"When was this?"

"A year ago, maybe more. It was the first time he had ever put an eye on a woman, at his age! And he had fallen for her so hard he might as well have had an ulcer. He kept it covered all right, except with me, but I certainly got it. He tried to date her, but nothing doing. He asked me what to do, and I had to tell him something, so I told him Sue was the kind of girl who was looking for glamour, and he ought to get famous somehow, like getting elected senator or pitching for the Yankees or writing a book. So he wrote a book, and the publishers wouldn't take it, and he killed himself."

I showed no excitement. "He told you he wrote a book?"

"No, he never mentioned it. Along about then he stopped talking about her, and I never brought it up because I didn't want to get him started again. But it was one of the things I suggested, and there's all this racket about a book that got rejected, so why can't I put two and two together?"

I could have objected that suicide by Dykes in December wouldn't help to explain the murder of Joan Wellman and Rachel Abrams in February, but I wanted to get to the point before the band started up again. I took a sip of my drink.

I smiled at her to keep it friendly. "Even if you're right about the suicide, what if you're shifting the cast? What if it was you instead of Sue he put his eye on?"

She snorted. "Me? If you mean that for a compliment, try again."

"I don't." My hand went to my breast pocket and came out with a folded paper. "This is a memorandum on office expenses prepared by Dykes, dated last May." I unfolded it. "I was going to ask you why he scribbled your home phone number on it, but now you can just say it was while he was telling you about Sue and asking your advice, so what's the use." I started to refold it.

"My phone number?" she demanded.

"Yep. Columbus three, four-six-two-oh."

"Let me see it."

I handed it to her, and she took a look. She held it to her right to get more light and looked again. "Len didn't write that," she declared.

"Why not?"

"It's not his writing."

"Whose is it? Yours?"

"No. It's Corrigan's. He writes square like that." She was frowning at me. "What is this, anyhow? Why should Corrigan be putting my phone number on this old memo?"

"Oh, forget it." I reached and took the paper from her fingers. "I thought maybe Dykes had written it and just thought I'd ask. Corrigan may have wanted to phone you about something after office hours." A rattle came from the drum, and the band slid into a trot. I put the memo in my pocket and stood up. "Skip it. Let's see how we like this."

We liked it fine.

When I got home, around two, Wolfe had gone up to bed. I slid the bolts on the front and back doors, twirled the knob of the safe, and drank a glass of milk before ascending. People are never satisfied. What was on my mind as I pulled the covers up was the contrariness of life. Why couldn't it have been Sue who danced like that instead of Blanche? If a man could figure out some way of combining -

The Sunday schedule at Wolfe's house was different since Marko Vukcic, his closest friend and the owner of Rusterman's Restaurant, had talked him into installing a pool table in the basement. It was now routine for Wolfe to spend Sunday morning in the kitchen with Fritz, preparing something special. At one-thirty Marko would arrive to help appreciate it, after which they would go to the basement for a five-hour session with the cues. I rarely took part, even when I was around, because it made Wolfe grumpy when I got lucky and piled up a big run.

That Sunday I fully expected to upset the schedule when Wolfe, having breakfasted in his room, entered the kitchen and I told him, "That notation on that letter is in the handwriting of James A. Corrigan, the senior partner."

He scowled at me a moment, then turned to Fritz. "I have decided," he said aggressively, "not to use the goose fat."

I raised my voice. "That notation on that let -"

"I heard you! Take the letter to Mr. Cramer and tell him about it."

It would have done no good to scream, not when he used that tone, so I controlled myself. "You have trained me," I said stiffly, "to remember conversations verbatim, including yours. Yesterday you said you wanted to know who we had scared and whose hand that notation resembles. I spent a whole evening and a wad of Wellman's dough finding out. To hand it to Cramer, for God's sake? What if it is Sunday? If they're scared they'll come. May I use the phone?"

His lips had tightened. "What else did you get?"

"Nothing. That's what you asked for."

"Very well. Satisfactory. Fritz and I are going to do a guinea hen, and there is barely time. If you get Mr. Corrigan down here, or even all of them, what will happen? I will show him that notation and he will deny all knowledge of it. I will ask where that letter has been, and will be told that it has been easily accessible to all of them. That will take perhaps five minutes. Then what?"

"Nuts. If you insist on playing pool instead of working on Sunday, wait till tomorrow. Why hand it to Cramer?"

"Because for its one purpose he is as good as I am - even better. It validates for them, if not for me, my assumption that someone in that firm has a guilty connection with the murder of three people. We have already scared him into this; with that letter a police inspector may scare him into something else. Take it to Mr. Cramer and don't bother me. You know quite well that for me pool is not play; it is exercise."

He strode to the refrigerator.

I had a notion to spend a couple of hours with the Sunday papers before going downtown, but decided there was no point in my being childish just because Wolfe was. Besides, with him I never knew. It could be that he merely wanted to cook and eat and play pool instead of working, but it could also be that he was pulling something fancy. He often got subtle without letting me in on it, and it wasn't impossible that there was something about that notation, or the way we got it, that made him figure it would be better to turn it over to Cramer than spring it himself. Walking the fifteen blocks to Twentieth Street with a cold March wind whipping at me from the right, I considered the matter and concluded that it might either rain or snow.

Cramer wasn't in, but Sergeant Purley Stebbins was. He gave me the chair at the end of his desk and listened to my tale. I gave it all to him except the detail of how we had learned it was Corrigan's handwriting, seeing no necessity of dragging Blanche into it. I merely told him that we had good reason to believe that it looked like Corrigan's writing. Of course he knew that Baird Archer's novel had been titled "Put Not Your Trust." He looked around for a Bible to check on the third verse of the 146th Psalm, but couldn't find one.

He was skeptical, but not about that. "You say Wolfe got this letter yesterday?" he demanded.

"Right."

"And he's done nothing about it?"

"Right."

"He hasn't asked Corrigan about it, or any of the others?"

"Right."

"Then what the hell's wrong with it?"

"Nothing that I know of. We're cooperating."

Purley snorted. "Nero Wolfe passing us a juicy item like this without first squeezing it for himself? Poop."

"If you don't like it," I said with dignity, "I'll take it back and see if I can get you something better. Would you accept a signed confession with dates and places?"

"I'll accept a signed statement from you, telling how you got this."

"Glad to, if you'll give me a decent typewriter."

What I got was what I expected, an Underwood about my age. I demanded a new ribbon, and they finally dug one up. Back at home I did a few chores in the office and then got comfortable with the Sunday papers. Wolfe came in now and then for a section to take to the kitchen. Around noon he entered, sat behind his desk, and requested a full report of my evening with Miss Duke. Evidently the guinea hen was under control. I obliged, thinking he might let me in on the strategy if that was what it was, but all I got was a nod.

That was all for Sunday, except that after dinner I got invited to the pool game and made a run of twenty-nine, and after supper I was instructed to tell Saul and Fred and Orrie to report in at eleven in the morning.

They were there when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms: Saul Panzer, small and wiry, in his old brown suit; Fred Durkin, with his round red face and spreading bald spot, in the red leather chair by right of seniority; and Orrie Gather, with his square jaw and crew cut, looking young enough to still be playing pro football. Wolfe took Fred first, then Orrie, and Saul last.

Adding what they told us to what we already knew from the police file and the girls and the firm members, including Blanche's little contribution Saturday evening, we were certainly up on Leonard Dykes. I could give you fifty pages on him, but it would leave you just where we were, so what's the use? If anyone who had known him had any idea who had killed him or why, they weren't saying. Saul and Fred and Orrie were three good men, and they hadn't got the faintest glimmer, though they had covered every possible source except Dykes's sister, who was in California. Wolfe kept them till lunchtime and then cut them loose. Saul, who hated to turn in an empty bag even more than I did, offered to spend another day or two at it on his own, but Wolfe said no.

When they had gone Wolfe sat and stared across the room at nothing a full three minutes before he pushed back his chair, though Fritz had announced lunch. Then he heaved a deep sigh, got himself up, and growled at me to come on.

We had just returned to the office after a silent meal that was anything but convivial when the doorbell rang and I went to answer it. Not many times has it given me pleasure to see a cop on that stoop, but that was one of them. Even a humble dick would have been a sign that something had happened or might be ready to happen, and this was Inspector Cramer himself. I opened up and invited him to cross the sill, took his hat and coat, and escorted him to the office without bothering to announce him.

He grunted at Wolfe, and Wolfe grunted back. He sat, got a cigar from his vest pocket, inspected it, stuck it between his teeth, moved his jaw to try it at various angles, and took it out again.

"I'm deciding how to start this," he muttered.

"Can I help?" Wolfe asked politely.

"Yes. But you won't. One tiling, I'm not going to get sore. It wouldn't do any good, because I doubt if I've got anything on you that would stick. Is that deal we made still on?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"Then you will kindly fill me in. When you decided to trick us into taking a jab at someone, why did you pick Corrigan?"

Wolfe shook his head. "You had better start over, Mr. Cramer. That's the worst possible way. There was no trick -"

Cramer cut in rudely and emphatically with a vulgar word. He went on. "I said I'm not going to get sore, and I'm not, but look at it. You get hold of that letter with that notation on it, the first real evidence anyone has seen that links someone in that office with Baird Archer and therefore with the murders. A real hot find. There were several ways you could have used it, but you pass them all up and send the letter down to me. I sent Lieutenant Rowcliff up there this morning. Corrigan admits the notation resembles his handwriting, but absolutely denies that he made it or ever saw it or has any idea what it stands for. The others all make the same denials."

Cramer cocked his head. "I've sat here many a time and listened to you making an assumption on poorer ground than what I've made this one on. I don't know how you got hold of a sample of Corrigan's handwriting, but that would have been easy. And I don't know whether it was you or Goodwin who made that notation on that letter, and I don't care. One of you did. All I want to know is, why? You're too smart and too lazy to play a trick like that just for the hell of it. That's why I'm not sore and I'm not going to get sore. You expected it to get you something. What?"

He put the cigar in his mouth and sank his teeth in it.

Wolfe regarded him. "Confound it," he said regretfully, "we're not going to get anywhere."

"Why not? I'm being goddam reasonable."

"You are indeed. But we can't meet. You will listen to me only if I concede your assumption that Mr. Goodwin or I made the notation on the letter, imitating Corrigan's hand. You will not listen to me if I deny that and substitute my own assumption, that the notation was in fact a trick but not mine. Will you?"

'Try it."

"Very well. Someone wanted to provide me with evidence that would support the line I was taking, but of such a nature and in such a manner that I would be left exactly where I was. Its pointing at Corrigan may have been deliberate or merely adventitious; it had to point at someone, and it may be that Corrigan was selected because he is somehow invulnerable. I preferred not to make an ass of myself by acting on it. All I would have got was a collection of denials. As it now stands, Lieutenant Rowcliff got the denials, and I am uncommitted. They don't know - he doesn't know - how I took it. For my part, I don't know who he is or what is moving him or why he wants to prod me, but I would like to know. If he acts again I may find out." Wolfe upturned a palm. "That's all."

"I don't believe it."

"I didn't expect you to."

"Okay. I've listened to it on your assumption, now try mine. You made the notation on the letter yourself and made me a present of it. Why?"

"No, Mr. Cramer. I'm sorry, but that's beyond my powers. Unless you also assume that I've lost my senses, and in that case why waste time on me?"

"I won't." Cramer left his chair, and as he did so his determination not to get sore suddenly went up the flue. He hurled his unlit cigar at my wastebasket, missed by a yard, and hit me on the ankle. "Fat bloated lousy liar," he rasped, and turned and tramped out.

Thinking that under the circumstances it was just as well to let him wriggle into his coat unaided, I stayed put. But also thinking that he might take a notion to try a simple little trick himself, when the front door slammed I got up and moseyed to the hall for a look through the one-way glass panel, and saw him cross to the sidewalk and get into his car, the door of which had been opened for an inspector.

When I returned to the office Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes closed and his brow creased. I sat. I hoped to God he didn't feel as helpless and useless as I did, but from the expression on his face I had another hope coming. I looked at my wrist and saw 2:52. When I looked again it said 3:06. I wanted to yawn but thought I didn't deserve to, and choked it.

Wolfe's voice blurted, "Where's Mr. Wellman?"

"In Peoria. He went Friday."

He had opened his-eyes and straightened up. "How long does it take an airplane to get to Los Angeles?"

"Ten or eleven hours. Some of them more."

"When does the next one go?"

"I don't know."

"Find out. Wait. Have we ever before been driven to extremities as now?"

"No."

"I agree. His gambit of that notation on that letter - what for? Confound him! Nothing but denials. You have the name and address of Dykes's sister in California."

"Yes, sir."

"Phone Mr. Wellman and tell him that I propose to send you to see her. Tell him it is either that or abandon the case. If he approves the expenditure, reserve a seat on the next plane and get packed. By then I shall have instructions ready for you. Is there plenty of cash in the safe?"

"Yes."

"Take enough. You are willing to cross the continent in an airplane?"

"I'll risk it."

He shuddered. He regards a twenty-block taxi ride as a reckless gamble.