Some Buried Caesar

Chapter 17

It was certainly an antique. Apparently it was a whole wing of the ground floor of the courthouse. The cells faced each other, two rows of them, one on either side of a long corridor. Mine was two doors from the far end. My cellmate was a chap in a dark blue suit with a pointed nose and sharp brown eyes and a thick mop of well-brushed hair. At the time I was locked in, which was around 6 o’clock, he was sitting on one of the cots brushing the hair. The dim light from the little barred window, too high to see out of, made things seem gloomy. We exchanged greetings and he went on brushing. Pretty soon he asked:

“Got any cards or dice with you?”

“Nope.”

“They didn’t strip you, did they?”

“They took my knife.”

He put the brush down and nodded. “You can’t kick on that. Were you working out at the grounds? I’ve never seen you around before.”

“You wouldn’t. My name is Archie Goodwin, and I’m from New York and am being squeezed.” I waved a hand and sat down on the other cot, which was covered with a dirty gray blanket. “Forget it. Were you working out at the grounds?”

“I was until yesterday afternoon. Spoon-bean. Are you hungry?”

“I could eat. But I hesitate to send in an order -”

“Oh, not on the house. No. They feed at 5, and it’s the usual. But if you’re hungry and happen to have a little jack…”

“Go ahead.”

He went over to the door and tapped three times with his fingernail on one of the iron bars, waited a second, and tapped twice. In a couple of minutes slow footsteps sounded in the corridor, and as they got to our apartment my mate said in a tone restrained but not particularly secretive, “Here, Slim.”

I got up and ambled across. It wasn’t the keeper who had escorted me in, but a tall skinny object with an Adam’s apple as big as a goose egg. I got out the Nero Wolfe expense wallet, extracted a dollar bill, and told him that I required two ham sandwiches and a chocolate egg malted. He took it but shook his head and said it wasn’t enough. I told him I knew that but hadn’t wanted to spoil him, and parted from another one, and asked him to include 5 evening papers in the order.

By the time he returned, in a quarter of an hour, my mate and I were old friends. His name was Basil Graham, and his firsthand knowledge of geography and county jails was extensive. I spread my lunch out on the cot with a sheet of the newspaper for a tablecloth, and it wasn’t until the last crumb had disappeared that he made a proposal which might have withered the friendship in the bud if I hadn’t been firm. His preparations were simple but interesting. From under the blanket of his cot he produced three teaspoons of the five and dime variety, and a small white bean. Then he came over and picked up one of my newspapers and asked, “May I?” I nodded. He put the newspaper on the floor and sat on it, and in front of him, on the concrete, ranged the three teaspoons in a row, bottoms up. He had nifty fingers. Under one of the spoons he put the bean and then looked up at me like the friend he was.

“You understand,” he said, “I’m just showing you how it’s done. It will pass the time. Sometimes the hand is quicker, sometimes the eye is quicker. It’s not a game of chance, but a game of skill. Your eye against my hand. Your eye may be quicker than my hand, and we can only tell by trying. It never hurts to try. Which spoon is the bean under?”

I told him, and it was. He tried again, his fingers darting, and again it was. The next time it wasn’t. The next three times it was, and he began to act flustered and surprised and displeased with himself.

I shook my head. “Don’t do it, Basil,” I said regretfully. “I’m not a wise guy exactly, but I’m a tightwad. If you go on working up indignation at yourself because my eye is so much quicker than your hand, you might get so upset you would actually offer to make a bet on it, and I would have to refuse. As a matter of fact, you are extremely good, both at manipulating the bean and at getting upset, but the currency you saw in the wallet is not my own, and even if it was I’m a tightwad.”

“It don’t hurt to try, does it? I just want to see -”

“No, I don’t lather.”

He cheerfully put the spoons and the bean away, and the friendship was saved.

It began to get dark in the cell, and after a while the lights were turned on. Somehow that only made it gloomier, since there was no light in the cell itself. The only way I could have read the paper, except for the headlines, which were screaming murder, would have been to hold it up against the bars of the door to catch the light from the corridor, so I gave it up and devoted myself to Basil. He was certainly a good-natured soul, for he had been nabbed after only one day’s work at the exposition and expected to be fined 50 samoleons on the morrow, but I suppose if you embrace spoon-bean as a career you have to be a philosopher to begin with. The inside of my nose was beginning to smart from the atmosphere. In a cell across the corridor someone started to sing in a thin tenor, I’m wearing my heart away for you, it cries out may your love be true, and from further down the line groans sounded, interrupted by a voice like a file growling, “Let him sing, let him sing, what the hell, it’s beautiful.”

Basil shrugged. “Just bums,” he said tolerantly.

My wrist watch said 10 minutes to 8 when footsteps stopped at our address again, a key was turned in the lock, and the door swung open. A keeper I hadn’t seen before stood in the gap and said, “Goodwin? You’re wanted.” He stepped aside to let me out, relocked the door, and let me precede him down the corridor. “Warden’s office,” he grunted.

Three men were standing in the office: Nero Wolfe, under self-imposed restraint, Frederick Osgood, scowling, and the warden, looking disturbed. I told them good evening. Osgood said, “Come on, Ollie, we’ll step outside.” The warden muttered something about the rules, Osgood got impatient and brusque, and out they went.

Wolfe stood and looked at me with his lips compressed. “Well?” he demanded. “Where were your wits?”

“Sure,” I said bitterly, “brazen it out. Wits my eye. Fingerprints on the wallet. I bribed the shed attendant with ten bucks of Jimmy Pratt’s money, which I’ll explain to you some day if I don’t rot in this dungeon. But chiefly, a deputy sheriff says that this morning at the hotel he heard Bronson tell somebody in New York on the telephone that a man named Goodwin poked him in the jaw and took a receipt away from him. Ha ha ha. Did you ever hear anything so droll? Even so, they don’t think I’m a murderer. They only think I’m reticent. They’re going to break my will. Of course if I had taken a receipt from Bronson and if they should find it -”

Wolfe shook his head. “Since you didn’t, they can’t. Which reminds me…”

His hand went into his pocket and came out again with my card case in it. I took it and inspected it, saw that it contained its proper items and nothing else, and put it where it belonged.

“Thanks. No trouble finding it?”

“None. It was quite simple. I had a talk with Mr. Waddell after you left and told him of my interview with Mr. Bronson last evening, whatever I thought might be helpful. Then he went, and I telephoned the courthouse and could learn nothing. I found myself marooned. Finally I succeeded in locating Mr. Osgood, and his daughter came for me. She had been questioned, but not, I imagine, with great severity - except by her father. Mr. Osgood is difficult. He suspects you of arranging the meeting between his daughter and Mr. Pratt’s nephew, God knows why. Watch him when he comes back in here; he might even leap at you. He agreed to control himself if I would question you about it.”

“Good. You came to question me. I was wondering what you came for.”

“For one thing…” He hesitated, which was rare. He went on, “For one thing, I came to bring that package for you. The Osgood housekeeper kindly prepared it.”

I looked and saw a four-bushel bundle, wrapped in brown paper, on a table. “Saws and rope ladders?” I demanded.

He said nothing. I went and tore some of the paper off and found that it contained a pillow, a pair of blankets, and sheets. I returned to confront Wolfe.

“So,” I said. “So that’s the way it is. I believe you mentioned wits a minute ago?”

He muttered ferociously, “Shut up. It has never happened before. I have telephoned, I have roared and rushed headlong, and Mr. Waddell cannot be found. Since I learned you were detained - he’s deliberately hiding from me, I’m convinced of it. The judge won’t set bail without the concurrence of the District Attorney. We don’t want bail anyway. Pfui! Bail for my confidential assistant! Wait! Wait till I find him!”

“Uh-huh. You wait at Osgood’s, and I wait in a fetid cell with a dangerous felon for a mate. By heaven, I will play spoon-bean with your money. As for the package you kindly brought, take it back to the housekeeper. God knows how long I’ll be here, and I don’t want to start in by getting a reputation as a sissy. I can take it, and it looks like I’m going to.”

“You spoke of money. That was my second reason for coming.”

“I know, you never carry any. How much do you want?”

“Well… twenty dollars. I want to assure you, Archie -”

“Don’t bother.” I got out the expense wallet and handed him a bill. “I can assure you that I shall come out of here with bugs -”

“Once when I was working for the Austrian government I was thrown into jail in Bulgaria -”

I strode to the door and pulled it open and bellowed into the hall: “Oh, warden! I’m escaping!”

He appeared from somewhere in a lumbering trot, stumbling. Behind him came Osgood, looking startled. From the other direction came the sound of a gallop, and that proved to be the keeper, with a revolver in his hand. I grinned at them: “April fool. Show me to my room. I’m sleepy. It’s the country air.”

Osgood rumbled, “Clown.” The warden looked relieved. I tossed a cheery good night to Wolfe over my shoulder, and started off down the hall with the keeper trailing me.

Basil was seated on his cot brushing his hair. He asked me what the yelling had been for and I told him I had had a fit. I asked him what time the lights went out and he told me 9 o’clock, so I proceeded to get my bed made. Having had the forethought to order 5 copies of the newspaper, there was more than enough to cover the cot entirely with a double thickness. Basil suspended the brushing momentarily to watch me arranging it with ample laps, and when I was nearly through he observed that it would rustle so much that I wouldn’t be able to sleep and neither would he. I replied that when I once got set I was as dead as a log, and he remarked in a sinister tone that it might not turn out that way in my present quarters. I finished the job anyhow. Down the line somewhere two voices were raised in an argument as to whether February 22nd was a national holiday, and others joined in.

It was approaching 9 o’clock when the key was turned in our lock again and the keeper appeared in the door and told me I was wanted.

“Cripes,” Basil said, “we’ll have to install a telephone.”

It couldn’t be Wolfe, I thought. There was no one else it could be except Waddell or Barrow, and there wasn’t a chance of getting put on the sidewalk by them, and if they wanted to harry me they could damn well wait until morning. I decided to be contrary.

“Whoever it is, tell him I’ve gone to bed.”

Even in the dim light, I seemed to perceive that the keeper looked disappointed. He asked, “Don’t you want to see her?”

“Her?”

“It’s your sister.”

“Oh. I’ll be derned. My dear sister.”

My tone must have been good, for there was no audible derision as for the second time I preceded the keeper along the corridor. I went for two reasons, the first being curiosity. It might conceivably be Nancy or Caroline, but my guess was Lily, and the only way of finding out was to go and see. Second, I felt I should cooperate. 9 o’clock at night was no visiting time at a jail, and if it was Lily she must have been liberal in her negotiations with the warden, and I hated to see money wasted. It was the first time I could remember that anyone had paid cash to have a look at me, and I thought it was touching. So I trotted along.

It was Lily. The warden was at his desk, and stayed there, and the keeper closed the door and stood in front of it. Lily was in a chair in a dark corner, and I crossed to her.

“Hello, sis.” I sat down.

“You know,” she said, “I was wondering last night what would be the best thing to do with you, but it never occurred to me to lock you up. When you get out of here I’ll try it. When will that be, by the way?”

“No telling. In time to spend Christmas at home, I hope. How are dad and ma and Oscar and Violet and Arthur -”

“Fine. Is it cozy?”

“Marvelous.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“Plenty. There’s a caterer.”

“Have you got money?”

“Sure, how much do you want?”

She shook her head. “No, really. I’m flush.” She opened her bag.

I reached and shut it. “No, you don’t. Jimmy Pratt gave me 10 dollars today and that’s partly why I’m here. Money is the root of all evil. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Why, Escamillo. I came to see you.”

“I’m aware of that. Did you bring any bedding?”

“No, but I can get some. Do you want some?”

“No, thanks. I was just curious. I have plenty of newspaper. But would you like to do me a favor?”

“I won’t sleep if I can’t do you a favor.”

“Will you be up at midnight?”

“I can stay up.”

“Do so. At midnight get Osgood’s on the phone and ask to speak to Mr. Nero Wolfe. Tell him you’re Mrs. Titus Goodwin and that you are at the Crowfield Hotel, having just come in an airplane from Cleveland, Ohio. Tell him that you got a telegram from your son Archie saying that he is in jail, stranded and abandoned and in despair. Tell him you want to know what the hell he had me put in jail for and you’ll have the law on him, and you’ll expect to see him first thing in the morning and he must be prepared to rectify his ghastly mistake without delay. And atone for it. Tell him he’ll have to atone for it.” I considered. “I guess that will do.”

She nodded. “I’ve got it. Is any of it straight?”

“No, it’s firecrackers.”

“Then why don’t I rout him out tonight? Make him come to the hotel right away and look for me. I mean at midnight.”

“My God, no. He’d kill me. That will be sufficient. You follow instructions.”

“I will. Anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Kiss me.”

“I can’t until I wash my face. Anyway, I told you that wasn’t a precedent. I have to be careful. I kissed a girl once in the subway and when she came to she was on top of the Empire State Building. She had floated out through a grating and right on up.”

“Goodness. Did you ever send one clear to heaven?”

“The place is full of them.”

“When are you going to get out of here?”

“I don’t know. You might ask Wolfe on the phone tonight.”

“Well.” She looked at me, and I was reminded how she had peeled me like a potato in the Methodist tent. “What I really came for. Any bail, any amount, I could have it arranged for by 11 o’clock in the morning. Shall I?”

“I might come high.”

“I said any amount.”

“I wouldn’t bother. It would make Wolfe jealous. Thanks just the same.”

The keeper’s hoarse voice sounded:

“After 9 o’clock, chief. What about the lights?”

I got up and told him, “Okay, I’ll help you. Good night, sis.”