Too Many Clients

10

It was 1:40 when I left that house. It was 6:10, four and a half hours later, when I said to Austin Hough, ''You know damn well you can't. Come on."

During the four and a half hours I had accomplished a good deal. I had learned that in a large university a lot of people know where an assistant professor ought to be or might be, but no one knows where he is. I had avoided getting trampled in corridors twice, once by diving into an alcove and once by fighting my way along the wall. I had sat in an anteroom and read a magazine article entitled "Experiments in Secondary Education in Japan." I had sweated for fifteen minutes in a phone booth, reporting to Wolfe on the latest developments, including the acquisition of a house by Cesar and Felita Perez. I had taken time out to find a lunch counter on University Place and take in a corned-beef sandwich, edible, a piece of cherry pie, not bad, and two glasses of milk. I had been stopped in a hall by three coeds, one of them as pretty as a picture (no reference to the pictures on the top floor of the Perez house), who asked for my autograph. They probably took me for either Sir Laurence Olivier or Nelson Rockefeller, I'm not sure which.

And I never did find Austin Hough until I finally decided it was hopeless and went for a walk in the direction of 64 Eden Street. I didn't phone because his wife might answer, and it wouldn't have been tactful to ask if her husband was in. The thing was to get a look at him. So I went there and pushed the button in the vestibule marked Hough, opened the door when the click sounded, and entered, mounted two flights, walked down the hall to a door which opened as I arrived, and there he was. He froze, staring. His mouth opened and closed. I said, not aggressively, just opening the conversation, "Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out."

"How in the name of God…" he said.

"How doesn't matter," I said. "We meet again, that's enough. Is your wife at home?"

"No. Why?"

"Why doesn't matter either if she's not here. There's nothing I'd enjoy more than chatting with you a while, but as you mentioned Monday, Mr. Wolfe comes down from the plant rooms at six o'clock, and he's in the office waiting for you. Come along."

He was deciding something. He decided it. "I don't know what you're talking about. I mentioned nothing to you Monday. I've never seen you before. Who are you?"

"I'm Thomas G. Yeager. His ghost. Don't be a sap. If you think it's just my word against yours, nuts. You can't get away with it. You know damn well you can't. Come on."

"We'll see if I can't. Take your foot away from the door. I'm shutting it."

There was no point in prolonging it. "Okay," I said, "I'll answer the question you didn't finish. This afternoon I had a talk with your wife. I got your name and address from an envelope I took from her bag."

"I don't believe it. That's a lie."

"Also in her bag was her driving license. Dinah Hough, born April third, nineteen-thirty, white, hair brown, eyes hazel. She likes champagne. She tilts her head a little to the right when she - "

"Where did you see her?"

"Where doesn't matter either. That's all you'll get from me. I told Mr. Wolfe I'd have you there at six o'clock, and it's a quarter past, and if you want - "

"Is my wife there?"

"No, not now. I'm telling you, Mr. Yeager - excuse me, Mr. Hough - if you don't want all hell to pop you'll take my hand and come along fast."

"Where's my wife?"

"Ask Mr. Wolfe."

He moved, and I sidestepped not to get bumped. He pulled the door shut, tried it to make sure the lock had caught, and headed for the stairs. I followed. On the way down I asked which direction was the best bet for a taxi and he didn't reply. My choice would have been Christopher Street, but he turned right at the corner, towards Seventh Avenue, and won the point. We had one in three minutes, at the worst time of day. He had nothing to say en route. There was a chance, one in ten, that Cramer had a man staked to keep an eye on the old brownstone, but he wouldn't know Hough from Adam, and going in the back way through the passage from 34th Street was complicated, so we rolled to the curb in front. Mounting the stoop and finding the chain bolt was on, I had to ring for Fritz to let us in.

Wolfe was at his desk, scowling at a crossword puzzle in the Observer. He didn't look up as we entered. I put Hough in the red leather chair and went to mine, saying nothing. When a master brain is working on a major problem you don't butt in. In twenty seconds he muttered, "Confound it," slammed his pencil on the desk, swiveled, focused on the guest, and growled, "So Mr. Goodwin rooted you out. What have you to say for yourself?"

"Where's my wife?" Hough blurted. He had been holding it in.

"Wait a second," I put in. "I've told him I talked with his wife this afternoon and got his name and address from items in her bag. That's all."

"Where is she?" Hough demanded.

Wolfe regarded him. "Mr Hough. When I learned Monday evening that a man named Thomas G. Yeager had been murdered, it would have been proper and natural for me to give the police a description of the man who had been here that afternoon impersonating him. For reasons of my own, I didn't. If I tell them about it now I'll give them not a description, but your name and address. Whether I do or not will depend on your explanation of that strange imposture. What is it?"

"I want to know where Goodwin saw my wife and why, and where she is. Until I know that, I'm explaining nothing."

Wolfe closed his eyes. In a moment he opened them. He nodded. "That's understandable. If your wife was a factor, you can't explain without involving her, and you won't do that unless she is already involved. Very well, she is. Monday afternoon, posing as Yeager, you told Mr. Goodwin that you expected to be followed to One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street. When your wife entered a room in the house at that address at noon today, she found a man there who is in my employ. He notified Mr. Goodwin, and he went there and talked with her. She had keys to the house and the room. That's all I intend to tell you. Now your explanation."

I seldom feel sorry for people Wolfe has got in a corner. Usually they have asked for it one way or another, and anyhow if you can't stand the sight of a fish flopping on the gaff you shouldn't go fishing. But I had to move my eyes away from Austin Hough. His long bony face was so distorted he looked more like a gargoyle than a man. I moved my eyes away, and when I forced them back he had hunched forward and buried his face in his hands.

Wolfe spoke. "Your position is hopeless, Mr. Hough. You knew that address. You knew Yeager's unlisted telephone number. You knew that he frequented that address. You knew that your wife also went there. What did you hope to accomplish by coming here to send Mr. Goodwin on a pointless errand?"

Hough's head raised enough for his eyes to come to me. "Where is she, Goodwin?" It was an appeal, not a demand.

"I don't know. I left her in that room at that address at twenty minutes to two. She was drinking champagne but not enjoying it. The only other person there was the man in Mr. Wolfe's employ. He wasn't keeping her; she was free to go. I left because I wanted to have a look at you, but she didn't know that. I don't know when she left or where she went."

"You talked with her? She talked?"

"Right. Twenty minutes or so."

"What did she say?"

I sent a glance at Wolfe, but he didn't turn his head to meet it, so I was supposed to use my discretion and sagacity. I did so.

"She told me a lie, not a very good one. She said she had been there only once and hadn't stayed long. She had left her umbrella there and had gone today to get it. The part about the umbrella was okay; it was there in a drawer and still is. She invited me to take her to lunch. She invited me to take her to the Flamingo tonight and dance till they close."

"How do you know it was a lie, that she had been there only once?"

I shook my head. "You want too much for nothing. Just file it that I don't think she lied; I know she did. And I know you know it too."

"You do not."

"Oh, nuts. Go climb a rope."

Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. "Mr, Hough. We have humored you, but our indulgence isn't boundless. Your explanation."

"What if I don't give you one? What if I get up and walk out?"

"That would be a misfortune for both of us. Now that I know who you are I would be obliged to tell the police of your performance Monday afternoon, and I'd rather not, for reasons of my own. In that respect your interest runs with mine - and your wife's. Her umbrella is still there."

He was licked and he knew it. His face didn't go gargoyle again, but his mouth was twisted and the skin around his eyes was squeezed in as if the light was too strong.

"Circumstances," he said. " Men are the sport of circumstances. Good God, as I sat in this chair talking to Goodwin, Yeager was dead, had been dead for hours. When I read it in the paper yesterday morning I knew how it would be if you found me, and I decided what to say; I was going to deny it, but now that won't do."

He nodded slowly. "So. Circumstances. Of course my wife shouldn't have married me. It was a circumstance that she met me at a moment when she was - but I won't go into that. I'll try to keep to the point. I was a fool to think that I might still save our marriage, but I did. She wanted things that I couldn't supply, and she wanted to do things that I am not inclined to and not equipped for. She couldn't do them with me, so she did them without me."

"The point," Wolfe said.

"Yes. This is the first time I have ever said a word about my relations with my wife to anyone. About a year ago she suddenly had a watch that must have cost a thousand dollars or more. Then other things - jewelry, clothes, a fur coat. She had frequently spent evenings out without me, but it became more than evenings; occasionally she came home after dawn. You realize that now that I've started it's difficult to confine myself to the essentials."

"Do so if possible."

"I'll try. I descended to snooping. Curiosity creeps into the homes of the unfortunate under the names of duty or pity. When my wife - "

"Is that Pascal?"

"No, Nietzsche. When my wife went out in the evening I followed her - not always, but when I could manage it. Mostly she went to a restaurant or the address of a friend I knew about, but twice she went to that address on Eighty-second Street and entered at the basement door. That was incomprehensible, in that kind of neighborhood, unless it was a dive of some sort - dope or God knows what. I went there one afternoon and pushed the button at the basement door, but learned nothing. I am not a practiced investigator like you. A man, I think a Puerto Rican, told me only that he had no vacant rooms."

He stopped to swallow. "I also snooped at home, and one day I found a phone number that my wife had scribbled on the back of an envelope. Chisholmfive, three-two-three-two. I dialed it and learned that it was the residence of Thomas G. Yeager. It wasn't listed. I made inquiries and found out who he was, and I saw him, more by luck than design. Do you want to know how it happened?"

"No. You met him?"

"No, I saw him at a theater. That was two weeks ago. And three days later, Friday, a week ago last Friday, I followed her when she went out, and she went again, that was the third time, to that house on Eighty-second Street. I went and stood across the street, and very soon, not more than five minutes, Yeager came, walking. It was still daylight. He turned in, to the basement entrance, and entered. What would you have done?"

Wolfe grunted. "I wouldn't have been there."

Hough turned to me. ' 'What would you have done, Goodwin?"

"That's irrelevant," I said. "I'm not you. You might as well ask what I would do if I were a robin and saw a boy robbing my nest. What did you do?"

"I walked up and down the block until people began to notice me, and then went home. My wife came home at six o'clock. I didn't ask her where she had been; I hadn't asked her that for a year. But I decided I must do something. I considered various things, various plans, and rejected them. I finally settled on one Sunday evening. We had had dinner - "

"'Which Sunday?"

"Last Sunday. Three days ago. We had had dinner at a restaurant and returned home. My wife was watching television, and I was in my room working, only I wasn't working. I was deciding what to do, and the next day I did it. I came here and saw Archie Goodwin. You know what I said to him."

"Yes. Do you think you've accounted for it?"

"I suppose not. It was like this: I knew that when Yeager didn't turn up Goodwin would find out why, either phone him - that was why I gave him the number - or go to the house. He would want to see Yeager, and he would tell him about me and what I had said. So Yeager would know that someone, someone he wouldn't identify from Goodwin's description, knew about his going to that house. He would know that Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe also knew about it. And he would tell my wife about it and describe me to her, and she would know I knew. That was the most important. I couldn't tell her, but I wanted her to know that I knew."

His eyes came to me and returned to Wolfe. "Another thing. I knew that Archie Goodwin wouldn't just dismiss it from his mind. He would wonder why I had mentioned that particular address, and he would wonder what secret connection there might be between Yeager and that house in that neighborhood, and when Archie Goodwin wonders about anything he finds out. All of this was in my mind, but the most important was that my wife would know that I knew."

His mouth worked, and he gripped the chair arms. "And that evening on the radio, the eleven-o'clock news, I learned that Yeager was dead, and yesterday morning in the paper I learned that he had died, had been murdered, Sunday night, and his body had been found in a hole in front of that house. Thank God my wife wasn't there Sunday night."

"You're sure of that?"

"Certainly I'm sure. We sleep in separate beds, but when she turns over I hear her. You realize - " He stopped.

"What?"

"Nothing. I was going to say you realize that I have told you things I wouldn't have thought I could possibly ever tell anybody, but you don't care about that. Perhaps I have blundered again, but I was trapped by circumstance. Is there any chance, any chance at all, that it will stay with you? I can't ask you for any consideration, I know that, after the way I imposed on Goodwin Monday afternoon. But if you could find it possible…"

Wolfe looked up at the clock. "It's my dinnertime. It doesn't please me to hurt a man needlessly, Mr. Hough, and your puerile imposition on Mr. Goodwin doesn't rankle. On the contrary; you gave him that address and he went there, and as a result we have a client." He pushed his chair back and rose. "What you have told us will be divulged only if it becomes requisite."

"Who is your client?"

When Wolfe said that was hardly his concern, he didn't try to insist. I permitted myself to feel sorry for him again as he left the chair. He was in a hell of a spot. He wanted to see his wife, he had to see her, but what was he going to say? Was he going to explain that he was responsible for her finding a reception committee when she went to get her umbrella? Was he going to admit - I turned that switch off. He had married her, I hadn't. When I went to the front to let him out, I stood on the stoop for a minute to see if there was someone around who was curious enough about him to follow him. There wasn't. I shut the door and went to join Wolfe in the dining room.

The two letters in the morning mail hadn't been answered, and when we returned to the office after dinner and had finished coffee we attended to them. One was from a Putnam County farmer asking how many starlings he wanted this year, and the other was from a woman in Nebraska saying that she would be in New York for a week late in June, with her husband and two children, and could they come and look at the orchids. The reply to the first was forty; Wolfe always invites two dinner guests for the starling pie. The reply to the second was no; she shouldn't have mentioned the children. When the answers had been typed and Wolfe had signed them, he sat and watched while I folded them and put them in the envelopes, and then spoke.

"Your exclusion of Mr. and Mrs. Perez is no longer valid. They knew they would get the house."

Of course I had known that was coming. I swiveled. "It's a funny thing about the Bible. I haven't been to church for twenty years, and modern science has proved that heaven is two hundred degrees Fahrenheit hotter than hell, but if I was asked to put my hand on a Bible and swear to a lie, I'd dodge. I'd say I was a Hindu or a Buddhist - Zen, of course. And Mr. and Mrs. Perez undoubtedly go to mass once a week and probably oftener."

"Pfui. To get a house, perhaps not; but to save their skins?"

I nodded. "Thousands of murderers have lied under oath on the witness stand, but this was different. They still sort of think I'm their detective."

"You're incorrigibly mulish."

"Yes, sir. Same to you."

"Nor is that imbecile Hough excluded. I call him an imbecile, but what if he is in fact subtle, wily, and adroit? Knowing or suspecting that his wife was going to that address Sunday evening, he got her keys, went there himself, killed Yeager, and left. Monday something alarmed him, no matter what; perhaps he told his wife what he had done, or she guessed, and her attitude brought dismay. He decided he must take some action that would make it seem highly unlikely that he had been implicated, and he did. You and I concluded yesterday that the impostor had not known Yeager was dead - not an assumption, a conclusion. We now abandon it."

"It's not incredible," I conceded. "I see only three holes in it."

"I see four, but none of them is beyond patching. I'm not suggesting that we have advanced; indeed, we have taken a step backward. We had concluded that that man was eliminated, but he isn't. And now?"

We discussed it for two solid hours. By the time we went up to bed, toward midnight, it looked very much as if we had a case and a client, two clients, and we didn't hold one single card that we were in a position to play. Our big ace, that we knew about that room and that Yeager had been killed in it, was absolutely worthless. And the longer we kept it up our sleeve, the more ticklish it would be when the police found a trail to it, as they were bound to sooner or later. When Wolfe left for his elevator he was so sour that he didn't say good night. As I undressed I was actually weighing the chance, if we called Fred off, that the cops wouldn't pry it loose that we had been there. That was so ridiculous that I turned over three times before I got to sleep.

The phone rang.

I understand that some people, when the phone rings in the middle of the night, surface immediately and are almost awake by the time they get it to their ear. I don't. I am still way under. I couldn't possibly manage anything as complicated as "Nero Wolfe's residence, Archie Goodwin speaking." The best I can do is " 'Lo.'"

A woman said, "I want to talk to Mr. Archie Goodwin." I was still fighting my way up.

"This is Goodwin. Who is this?"

"I am Mrs. Cesar Perez. You must come. Come now. Our daughter Maria is dead. She was killed with a gun. Will you come now?"

I was out from under. "Where are you?" I reached for the switch of the bed light and glanced at the clock. Twenty-five to three. "We are at home. They took us to look at her, and we are just come back. Will you come?"

"Is anybody there? Policemen?"

"No. One brought us home, but he is gone.

Will you come?"

"Yes. Right away. As fast as I can make it. If you haven't already - "

She hung up.

I like to take my time dressing, but I am willing to make an exception when necessary. When my tie was tied and my jacket on, and my things were in my pockets, I tore a sheet from my notebook and wrote on it:

Maria Perez is dead, murdered, shot - not at home, I don't know where. Mrs. P. phoned at 2:35. I'm on my way to 82^nd Street.

AG

Down one flight I went to the door of Wolfe's room and slipped the note through the crack at the bottom. Then on down, and out. At that time of night Eighth Avenue would be the best bet for a taxi, so I headed east.