The Red Box

Chapter 6

At three minutes to nine the following morning, Wednesday, as I rolled the roadster to a stop on 52nd Street, in a nice open space evidently kept free by special police orders, I was feeling a little sorry for Nero Wolfe. He loved to stage a good scene and get an audience sitting on the edge of their chairs, and here was this one, his own idea, taking place a good mile from his plant rooms and his oversized chair. But, stepping onto the sidewalk in front of Boyden McNair Incorporated, I merely shrugged my shoulders and thought to myself, Well-a-day, you fat son-of-a-gun, you can’t be a homebody and see the world too.

I walked across to the entrance, where the uniformed McNair doorman was standing alongside a chunky guy with a round red face and a hat too small for him pushed back on his forehead. As I reached for the door this latter moved to block me.

He put an arm out. “Excuse me, sir. Are you here by request? Your name, please?” He brought into view a piece of paper with a typewritten list on it.

I gazed down my nose at him. “Look here, my man. It was I who made the requests.”

He squinted at me. “Yeah? Sure. The inspector says, nothing for you boys here. Beat it.”

Naturally I would have been sore anyhow at being taken for a reporter, but what made it worse was that I had taken the trouble to put on my suit of quiet brown with a faint tan stripe, a light tan shirt, a green challis four-in-hand and my dark green soft-brim hat. I said to him:

“You’re blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other. Did you ever hear that one before? I’m Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office.” I took out a card and stuck it at him.

He looked at it. “Okay. They’re expecting you upstairs.”

Inside was another dick, standing over by the elevator, and no one else around. This one I knew: Slim Foltz. We exchanged polite greetings, and I got in the elevator and went up.

Cramer had done pretty well. Chairs had been gathered from all over, and about fifty people, mostly women but a few men, were sitting there in the big room up front. There was a lot of buzz and chatter. Four or five dicks, city fellers, were in a group in a corner where the booths began. Across the room Inspector Cramer stood talking to Boyden McNair, and I walked over there.

Cramer nodded. “Just a minute, Goodwin.” He went on with McNair, and pretty soon turned to me. “We got a pretty good crowd, huh? Sixty-two promised to come, and there’s forty-one here. Not so bad.”

“All the employees here?”

“All but the doorman. Do we want him?”

“Yeah, make it unanimous. Which booth?”

“Third on the left. Do you know Captain Dixon? I picked him for it.”

“I used to know him.” I walked down the corridor, counting three, and opened the door and went in. The room was a little bigger than the one we had used the day before. Sitting behind the table was a little squirt with a bald head and big ears and eyes like an eagle. There were pads of paper and pencils arranged neatly in front of him, and at one side was a stack of five boxes of Bailey’s Royal Medley. I told him he was Captain Dixon and I was Archie Goodwin, and it was a nice morning. He looked at me by moving his eyes without disturbing his head, known as conservation of energy, and made a noise something between a hoot-owl and a bullfrog. I left him and went back to the front room.

McNair had gone around back of the crowd and found a chair. Cramer met me and said, “I don’t think we’ll wait for any more. They’re going to get restless as it is.”

“Okay, shoot.” I went over and propped myself against the wall, facing the audience. They were all ages and sizes and shapes, and were about what you might expect. There are very few women who can afford to pay 300 bucks for a spring suit, and why do they have to be the kind you might as well wrap in an old piece of burlap for all the good it does? Nearly always. Among the exceptions present that morning was Mrs. Edwin Frost, who was sitting with her straight back in the front row, and with her were the two goddesses, one on each side. Llewellyn Frost and his father were directly behind them. I also noted a red-haired woman with creamy skin and eyes like stars, but later, during the test, I learned that her name was Countess von Rantz-Deichen of Prague, so I never tried to follow it up.

Cramer had faced the bunch and was telling them about it:

“... First I want to thank Mr. McNair for closing his store this morning and permitting it to be used for this purpose. We appreciate his cooperation, and we realize that he is as anxious as we are to get to the bottom of this... this sad affair. Next I want to thank all of you for coming. It is a real pleasure and encouragement to know that there are so many good citizens ready to do their share in a... a sad affair like this. None of you had to come, of course. You are merely doing your duty — that is, you are helping out when it is needed. I thank you in the name of the Police Commissioner, Mr. Hombert, and the District Attorney, Mr. Skinner.”

I wanted to tell him, “Don’t stop there, what about the Mayor and the Borough Presidents and the Board of Aldermen and the Department of Plant and Structures...”

He was going on: “I hope that none of you will be offended or irritated at the simple experiment we are going to try. It wasn’t possible for us to explain it to each of you on the telephone, and I won’t make a general explanation now. I suppose some of you will regard it as absurd, and in the case of most of you, and possibly all of you, it will be, but I hope you’ll just take it and let it go at that. Then you can tell your friends how dumb the police are, and we’ll all be satisfied. But I can assure you we’re not doing this just for fun or to try to annoy somebody, but as a serious part of our effort to get to the bottom of this sad affair.

“Now this is all there is to it. I’m going to ask you to go one at a time down that corridor to the third door on the left. I’ve organized it to take as little time as possible; that’s why we asked you to write your name twice, on two different pieces of paper, when you came in. Captain Dixon and Mr. Goodwin will be in that room, and I’ll be there with them. We’ll ask you a question, and that’s all. When you come out you are requested to leave the building, or stay here by the corridor if you want to wait for someone, without speaking to those who have not yet been in the booth. Some of you, those who go in last, will have to be patient. I want to thank you again for your cooperation in this... this sad affair.”

Cramer took a breath of relief, wheeled, and called out toward the bunch of dicks: “All right, Rowcliff, we might as well start with the front row.”

“Mr. Inspector!” Cramer turned again. A woman with a big head and no shoulders had arisen in the middle of the audience and stuck her chin forward. “I want to say, Mr. Inspector, that we are under no compulsion to answer any question you may think fit to ask. I am a member of the Better Citizens’ League, and I came here to make sure that—”

Cramer put up a hand at her. “Okay, madam. No compulsion at all—”

“Very well. It should be understood by all that citizenship has its privileges as well as its duties—”

Two or three snickered. Cramer tossed me a glance, and I joined him and followed him down the corridor and into the room. Captain Dixon didn’t bother to move even his eyes this time, probably having enough of us already in his line of vision to make a good guess at our identity. Cramer grunted and sat down on one of the silk affairs against the partition.

“Now that we’re ready to start,” he growled, “I think it’s the bunk.”

Captain Dixon made a noise something between a pigeon and a sow with young. I had decided to wear out the ankles so as to see better. I removed the four top Royal Medleys from the stack and put them on the floor under the table, out of sight, and picked up the other one.

“As arranged?” I asked Cramer. “Am I to say it?”

He nodded. The door opened, and one of the dicks ushered in a middle-aged woman with a streamlined hat on the side of her head, and lips and fingernails the color of the first coat of paint they put on an iron bridge. She stopped and looked around without much curiosity. I put out a hand at her.

“The papers, please?”

She handed me the slips of paper, and I gave one to Captain Dixon and kept the other. “Now, Mrs. Ballin, please do what I ask, naturally, as you would under ordinary circumstances, without any hesitation or nervousness—”

She smiled at me. “I’m not nervous.”

“Good.” I took the cover from the box and held it out to her. “Take a piece of candy.”

Her shoulders lifted daintily, and fell. “I very seldom eat candy.”

“We don’t want you to eat it. Just take it. Please.”

She reached in without looking and snared a chocolate cream and held it up in her fingers and looked at me. I said, “Okay. Put it back, please. That’s all. Thank you. Good day, Mrs. Ballin.”

She glanced around at us, said, “Dear me,” in a tone of mild and friendly astonishment, and went.

I bent to the table and marked an X on a corner of her paper, and the figure 6 beneath her name. Cramer growled, “Wolfe said three pieces.”

“Yeah. He said to use our judgment too. In my judgment, if that dame was mixed up in anything, even Nero Wolfe would never find it out. What did you think of her, Captain?”

Dixon made a noise something between a hartebeest and a three-toed sloth. The door opened and in came a tall slender woman in a tight-fitting long black coat and a silver fox that must have had giantism. She kept her lips tight and gazed at us with deepest concentrated eyes. I took her slips and gave one to Dixon.

“Now, Miss Claymore, please do what I ask, naturally, as you would under ordinary circumstances, without any hesitation or nervousness. Will you?”

She shrank back a little, but nodded. I extended the box.

“Take a piece of candy.”

“Oh!” she gasped. She goggled at the candy. “That’s the box...” She shuddered, backed off, held her clenched fist against her mouth, and let out a fairly good shriek.

I said icily, “Thank you. Good day, madam. All right, officer.”

The dick touched her arm and turned her for the door. I observed, bending to mark her slip, “That scream was just shop talk. That’s Beth Claymore, and she’s as phony on the stage as she is off. Did you see her in The Price of Folly?”

Cramer said calmly, “It’s a goddam joke.” Dixon made a noise. The door opened and another woman came in.

We went through with it, and it took nearly two hours. The employees were saved till the last. What with one thing and another, some of the customers took three pieces, some two or one, and a few none at all. When the first box began to show signs of wear I began with a fresh one from the reserve. Dixon made a few more noises, but confined himself mostly to making notations on his slips, and I went ahead with mine.

There were a few ructions, but nothing serious. Helen Frost came in pale and stayed pale, and wasn’t having any candy. Thelma Mitchell glared at me and took three pieces of candied fruit, with her teeth clinched on her lower lip. Dudley Frost said it was nonsense and started an argument with Cramer and had to be suggested out by the dick. Llewellyn said nothing and made three different selections. Helen’s mother picked out a thin narrow chocolate, a Jordan almond, and a gum drop, and wiped her fingers delicately on her handkerchief after she put them back. One customer that interested me because I had heard a few things about him was a bird in a morning coat with the shoulders padded. He looked about forty but might have been a little older, and had a thin nose, slick hair, and dark eyes that never stopped moving. His slip said Perren Gebert. He hesitated a second about having refreshment, then smiled to show he didn’t mind humoring us, and took at random.

The employees came last, and last of all was Boyden McNair himself. After I had finished with him, Inspector Cramer stood up.

“Thank you, Mr. McNair. You’ve done us a big favor. We’ll be out of here now in two minutes, and you can open up.”

“Did you... get anywhere?” McNair was wiping his face with his handkerchief. “I don’t know what all this is going to do to my business. It’s terrible.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled it out again. “I’ve got a headache. I’m going to the office and get some aspirin. I ought to go home, or go to a hospital. Did you... what kind of a trick was this?”

“This in here?” Cramer got out a cigar. “Oh, this was just psychology. I’ll let you know later if we got anything out of it.”

“Yes. Now I’ve got to go out there and see those women... well, let me know.” He turned and went.

I left with Cramer, and Captain Dixon trailing behind. While we were leaving the establishment, with his men to gather up and straggling customers and the help around, he kept himself calm and dignified, but as soon as we were out on the sidewalk he turned loose on me and let me have it. I was surprised at how bitter he was, and then, as he went on getting warmer, I realized that he was just showing how high an opinion he had of Nero Wolfe. As soon as he gave me a chance I told him:

“Nuts, Inspector. You thought Wolfe was a magician, and just because he told us to do this someone was going to flop on their knees and claw at your pants and pull an I-done-it. Have patience. I’ll go home and tell Wolfe about it, and you talk ’em over with Captain Dixon — that is, if he can talk—”

Cramer grunted. “I should have had more sense. If that fat rhinoceros is kidding me, I’ll make him eat his license and then he won’t have any.”

I had climbed in the roadster. “He’s not kidding you. Wait and see. Give him a chance.” I slipped in the gear and rolled away.

Little did I suspect what was waiting for me at West 35th Street. I got there about half past eleven, thinking that Wolfe would have been down from the plant rooms for half an hour and therefore I would catch him in good humor with his third bottle of beer, which was so much to the good, since I was not exactly the bearer of glad tidings. After parking in front and depositing my hat in the hall, I went to the office, and found to my surprise that it was empty. I sought the bathroom, but it was empty too. I proceeded to the kitchen to inquire of Fritz, and as soon as I crossed the threshold I stopped and my heart sank to my feet and kept on right through the floor.

Wolfe sat at the kitchen table with a pencil in his hand and sheets of paper scattered around. Fritz stood across from him, with the gleam in his eye that I knew only too well. Neither paid any attention to the noise I had made entering. Wolfe was saying:

“... but we cannot get good peafowl. Archie could try that place on Long Island, but it is probably hopeless. A peafowl’s breast flesh will not be sweet and tender and properly developed unless it is well protected from all alarms, especially from the air, to prevent nervousness, and Long Island is full of airplanes. The goose for this evening, with the stuffing as arranged, will be quite satisfactory. The kid will be ideal for tomorrow. We can phone Mr. Salzenback at once to butcher one, and Archie can drive to Garfield for it in the morning. You can proceed with the preliminaries for the sauce. Friday is a problem. If we try the peafowl we shall merely be inviting catastrophe. Squabs will do for tidbits, but the chief difficulty remains. Fritz, I’ll tell you. Let us try a new tack entirely. Do you know shish kabab? I have had it in Turkey. Marinate thin slices of tender lamb for several hours in red wine and spices. Here, I’ll put it down: thyme, mace, peppercorns, garlic—”

I stood and took it in. It looked hopeless. There was no question but that it was the beginning of a major relapse. He hadn’t had one for a long while, and it might last a week or more, and while that spell was on him you might as well try to talk business to a lamp post as to Nero Wolfe. When we were engaged on a case, I never liked to go out and leave him alone with Fritz, for this very reason. If only I had got home an hour earlier! It looked now as if it had gone too far to stop it. And this was one of the times when it seemed easy to guess what had brought it on: he hadn’t really expected anything from the mess he had cooked up for Cramer and me, and he was covering up.

I gritted my teeth and walked over to the table. Wolfe went on talking, and Fritz didn’t look at me. I said, “What’s this, you going to start a restaurant?” No attention. I said, “I’ve got a report to make. Forty-five people ate candy out of those boxes, and they all died in agony. Cramer is dead. H. R. Cragg is dead. The goddesses are dead. I’m sick.”

“Shut up, Archie. Is the car in front? Fritz will need a few things right away.”

I knew if the delivery of supplies once started there wouldn’t be a chance. I also knew that coaxing wouldn’t do it, and bullying wouldn’t do it. I was desperate, and I ran over Wolfe’s weaknesses in my mind and picked one.

I butted in. “Listen. This cockeyed feast you’re headed for, I know I can’t stop it. I’ve tried that before. Okay—”

Wolfe said to Fritz, “But not the pimento. If you can find any of those yellow anguino peppers down on Sullivan Street—”

I didn’t dare touch him, but I leaned down close to him. I bawled at him, “And what am I to tell Miss Frost when she comes here at two o’clock? I am empowered to make appointments, am I not? She is a lady, is she not? Of course, if common courtesy is overboard too—”

Wolfe stopped himself, pressed his lips together, and turned his head. He looked me in the eye. After a moment he asked quietly, “Who? What Miss Frost?”

“Miss Helen Frost. Daughter of Mrs. Edwin Frost, cousin of our client, Mr. Llewellyn Frost, niece of Mr. Dudley Frost. Remember?”

“I don’t believe it. This is trickery. Birdlime.”

“Sure.” I straightened up. “This is close to the limit. Very well. When she comes I’ll tell her I exceeded my authority in venturing to make an appointment. — I won’t be in for lunch, Fritz.” I wheeled and strode out, to the office, and sat down at my desk and pulled the slips of paper from my pocket, wondering if it would work, and trying to decide what I would do if it did. I fooled with the slips pretending to arrange them, not breathing much so I could listen.

It was at least two minutes before I heard anything from the kitchen, and then it was Wolfe sliding back his chair. Next his footsteps approaching. I kept busy with the papers, and so didn’t actually see him as he entered the office, crossed to his desk, and got lowered into his seat. I continued with my work.

Finally he said, in the sweet tone that made me want to kick him, “So I am to change all my plans at the whim of a young woman who, to begin with, is a liar. Or at the least, postpone them.” He suddenly exploded ferociously, “Mr. Goodwin! Are you conscious?”

I said without looking up, “No.”

Silence. After a while I heard him sigh. “All right, Archie.” He had controlled himself back to his normal tone. “Tell me about it.”

It was up to me. It was the first time I had ever stopped a relapse after it had got as far as the menu stage, but it looked as if it might turn out to be something like curing a headache by chopping off my head. I had to go through with it, and the only way that occurred to me was to take a slender thread that had dangled in front of me up at McNair’s that morning, and try to sell it to Wolfe for a steel cable.

“Well,” I said, and swiveled. “We went and did it.”

“Go on.”

He had half-shut eyes on me. I knew he suspected me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had my number right then. But he wasn’t starting back for the kitchen.

“It was pretty close to a washout.” I picked up the slips. “Cramer’s as sore as a boil on your nose. Of course, he didn’t know I was keeping track of the kind of candy they picked; he thought we were just looking for a giveaway in their actions, and naturally that was a flop. A third of them were scared and half of them were nervous and some got mad and a few were just casual. That’s all there was to that. According to instructions, I watched their fingers while Cramer and Dixon looked at their faces, and put down symbols for their selections.” I flipped the slips. “Seven of them took Jordan almonds. One of them took two.”

Wolfe reached out and rang for beer. “And?”

“And so I put it down that way. I’ll tell you. I’m not slick enough for that sort of thing. You know it and I know it. Who is? It’s a waste of time to say you are, on account of inertia. Nevertheless, I am slicker than glue. Six of those people who took Jordan almonds, on account of their expressions and who they are and the way they did it — I don’t think it meant anything. But the seventh one — I don’t know. It’s true he’s going to have a nervous breakdown, he told you that himself. He was taken by surprise at the request to have a piece of candy, just as all the rest were. Cramer handled it right; he had men there to see that no one knew what was going on before they got inside the room. And Mr. Boyden McNair acted funny. When I stuck the box at him and asked him to take a piece he drew back a little, but lots of others did that. Then he pulled himself up and reached and looked in, and his fingers went straight to a Jordan almond and then jerked away, and he took a chocolate. I asked him quick to take another without giving him a chance to get it decided, and this time he touched two other pieces first and then took a Jordan almond, a white one. The third try he went straight to a gum drop and took it.”

Fritz had come with beer for Wolfe and a scowl for me, and Wolfe had opened a bottle and was pouring. He murmured, “It was you who saw it, Archie. Your conclusion?”

I tossed the slips onto my desk. “My conclusion is that McNair was Jordan almond-conscious. You know, the way a workingman like me is class-conscious or a guzzler like you is beer-conscious. I’ll admit it’s vague, but you sent me up there to see if any of that bunch would betray an idea that Jordan almonds are different from any other candy, and either Boyden McNair did just that or I’ve got the soul of a male stenographer. And I don’t even use all my fingers.”

“Mr. McNair. Indeed.” Wolfe had emptied one and was leaning back. “Miss Helen Frost, according to her cousin, our client, calls him Uncle Boyd. Did you know that I am an uncle, Archie?”

He knew perfectly well that I knew it, since I typed the monthly letters to Belgrade for him, but of course he wasn’t expecting an answer. He had shut his eyes and became motionless. His brain may have been working, but so was mine; I had to figure out some plausible way of getting out of there to hop in the roadster and run up to 52nd Street and kidnap Helen Frost. I wasn’t worrying about the McNair thing. It was the one nibble I had got uptown, and I really thought there was a good chance that we might hook a fish from it; besides, I had given it to Wolfe straight and now it was up to him. But the two o’clock appointment I had mentioned, God help me...

I got an idea. I knew that with Wolfe’s eyes shut for his genius to work, he was often beyond the reach of external stimuli. Several times I had even kicked over my wastebasket without getting a flicker from him. I sat and watched him a while, saw him breathing and that was all, and finally decided to risk it. I drew my feet in under me and lifted myself out of my chair without making it creak. I kept my eyes on Wolfe. Three short steps on the rubber tile took me to the first rug, and on that silence was a cinch. I tiptoed it, holding my breath, accelerating gradually as I approached the door. I made the threshold — a step in the hall — another—

Thunder rolled from the office behind me: “Mr. Goodwin!”

I had a notion to dash on out, snaring my hat on the fly, but an instant’s reflection showed that would have been disastrous. He would have relapsed again during my absence, out of pure damn meanness. I turned and went back in.

He roared, “Where were you going?”

I tried to grin at him. “Nowhere. Just upstairs a minute.”

“And why the furtive stealth?”

“I... why... egad, sir, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Indeed. You egad me, do you?” He straightened up in his chair. “Not disturb me? Ha! What else have you done but that during the past eight years? Who is it that violently disrupts any private plans which I may venture, on rare occasions, to undertake?” He wiggled a whole hand at me. “You were not going upstairs. You were going to sneak out of this house and rush through the city streets in a desperate endeavor to conceal the chicanery you practiced on me. You were going to try to get Helen Frost and bring her here. Did you think I was not aware of your mendacity, there in the kitchen? Have I not told you that your powers of dissimulation are wretched? Very well. I have three things to say to you. The first is a reminder: we are to have rice fritters with black currant jam, and endive with tarragon, for lunch. The second is a piece of information: you will not have time to lunch here. The third is an instruction: you are to proceed to the McNair establishment, get Miss Frost, and have her at this office by two o’clock. Doubtless you will find opportunity to get a greasy sandwich somewhere. By the time you arrive here with Miss Frost I shall have finished with the fritters and endive.”

I said, “Okay. I heard every word. The Frost girl has a stubborn eye. Have I got a free hand? Strangle her? Wrap her up?”

“But, Mr. Goodwin.” It was a tone he seldom used; I would call it a sarcastic whine. “She has an appointment here for two o’clock. Surely there should be no difficulty. If only common courtesy—”

I beat it to the hall for my hat.