Too Many Clients

13

May I introduce Mr. Saul Panzer and Mr. Orrie Cather? Mr. Panzer is the one in the red leather chair. Looking at him - his big nose, his little deep-set eyes, his hair that won't stay in place - you will suppose that he isn't much. Hundreds of people who have supposed that have regretted it. A good operative has to be good in a dozen different ways, and in all of them Saul is the best. Mr. Cather, in the yellow chair to Saul's left, might fool you too. He is fully as handsome as he looks, but not quite as smart as he looks, though he might be if his ego didn't get in the way. If a man is to be judged by a single act and you have a choice, the one to pick is how he looks at himself in a mirror, and I have seen Orrie do that. You have met Mr. Fred Durkin, in the chair next to Orrie's.

Wolfe and Fred and I had just come from the dining room to join Saul and Orrie in the office. During lunch I had been wondering what Wolfe had on the program for them, considering the instructions he had given me. With me it had got to the point where earning a fee was only secondary; the main question was how we were going to wriggle down off the limb we were out on; and while I fully appreciated the talents and abilities of those three men, I couldn't guess how they were going to be used to find an answer to that. So I wanted to hear that briefing, but as I went to my chair and whirled it around Wolfe spoke.

"We won't need you, Archie. You have your instructions."

I sat. "Maybe I can supply details."

"No. You had better get started." I got up and went. There were several pointed remarks I could have made, for instance that I had a right to know what the chances were that I would sleep in my bed that night, but it might not fit his script, granting that he had one, for Saul and Fred and Orrie to know how bad it was. So I went, spry and jaunty until I was in the hall out of sight. I had a date with an actress, made on the phone, but not for a specified minute - any time between three and four. It was five after three when I entered the lobby of the Balfour on Madison Avenue in the Sixties, gave the hallman my name, and said Miss Meg Duncan was expecting me.

He gave me a knowing look and inquired, "How's the fat man?"

I said, "Turn around. I'm not much good at faces, but I remember backs."

He said, "You wouldn't remember mine. I used to hop at the Churchill. Has Miss Duncan lost something?"

"Questions answered while I wait," I told him. "Mr. Wolfe is just fine, thanks. Miss Duncan can't find her solid gold knuckleduster and thinks you took it."

He grinned. "It's a treat to meet you. You can pick it up on your way out. Twelfth floor. Twelve D."

I went and entered the elevator and was lifted. Twelve D was at the end of the hall. I pushed the button, and in half a minute the door opened a crack and a voice asked who it was. I pronounced my name, the door swung wide, and a square-jawed female sergeant gave me an unfriendly look. "Miss Duncan has a bad headache," she said in a voice that went with the jaw and the look. "Can't you tell me what - "

"Mike!" A voice from inside somewhere.

"Is that Mr. Goodwin?"

"Yes! He says it is!"

"Then send him in here!"

A man is bound to feel a little uneasy if he has an appointment to call on a young woman in the middle of the afternoon and is ushered into a room dimmed by Venetian blinds, and she is in bed and clad accordingly, especially if as soon as the door is closed behind you she says, "I haven't got a headache, sit here," and pats the edge of the bed. Even if you are certain that you can keep control of the situation - but that's the trouble; you can't help feeling that keeping control of the situation is not what your fellow men have a right to expect of you, let alone her fellow women.

There was a chair turned to face the bed, and I took it. As I sat she asked if I had brought her cigarette case.

"No," I said, "but it's still there in the safe, and that's something. Mr. Wolfe sent me to ask you a question. Where were you yesterday evening from nine o'clock to midnight?"

If she had been on her feet, or even on a chair, I believe she would have jumped me again, from the way her eyes flashed. It was personal, not professional. "I wish I had clawed your eyes out," she said.

"I know, you said that before. But I didn't come to fire that question at you just to hear you say it again. If you have seen a newspaper you may have noticed that a girl named Maria Perez was murdered last night?"

"Yes."

"And that she lived at One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street?"

"Yes."

"So where were you?"

"You know where I was. At the theater. Working."

"Until ten minutes to eleven. Then you changed. Then?"

She was smiling. "I don't know why I said that about clawing your eyes out. I mean I do know. Holding me so tight my ribs hurt, and then just a cold fish. Just a - a stone.''

"Not a fish and a stone. In fact, neither. Just a detective on an errand. I still am. Where did you go when you left the theater?

"I came home and went to bed. Here." She patted the bed. The way she used her hands had been highly praised by Brooks Atkinson in the Times. "I usually go somewhere and eat something, but last night I was too tired."

"Had you ever seen Maria Perez? Ever run into her in that basement hall?"

"No."

"I beg your pardon; I doubled up the questions. Had you ever seen her or spoken with her?"

"No."

I nodded. "You would say that, naturally, if you thought you could make it stick. But you may have to eat it. This is how it stands. The police haven't got onto that room yet. They still haven't connected Yeager with that house. Mr. Wolfe hopes they won't, for reasons that don't matter to you. He believes that whoever killed Yeager killed Maria Perez, and so do I. He wants to find the murderer and clear it up in such a way that that house doesn't come into it. If he can do that you'll never have to go on the witness stand and identify your cigarette case. But he can do that only if he gets the facts, and gets them quick."

I left the chair and went and sat on the bed where she had patted it. "For example, you. I don't mean facts like where were you Sunday night. We haven't the time or the men to start checking alibis. I asked you about last night just to start the conversation. Your alibi for last night is no good, but it wouldn't have been even if you had said you went to Sardi's with friends and ate a steak. Friends can lie, and so can waiters."

"I was at a benefit performance at the Majestic Theater Sunday night."

"It would take a lot of proving to satisfy me that you were there without a break if I had a healthy reason to think you killed Yeager - but I'm not saying you didn't. An alibi, good or bad, isn't the kind of fact I want from you. You say you never saw or spoke with Maria Perez. Last night her mother phoned me to come, and I went, and searched her room, and hidden under a false bottom in a drawer I found a collection of items. Among them were three photographs of you. Also there was some money, five-dollar bills, that she hadn't wanted her parents to know about. I'm being frank with you, Miss Duncan; I've told you that Mr. Wolfe would prefer to close it up without the police ever learning about that room and the people who went there. But if they do learn about it, not from us, then look out. Not only that you walked in on Mr. and Mrs. Perez and me, and your cigarette case, but what if they find your fingerprints on those five-dollar bills?"

That was pure dumb luck. I would like to say that I had had a hunch and was playing it, but if I once started dolling up these reports there's no telling where I'd stop. I was merely letting my tongue go. If there was anything more in Meg Duncan than the fact (according to her) that she had gone straight home from the theater last night, I wanted to talk it out of her if possible. It was just luck that I didn't mention that the photographs were magazine and newspaper reproductions and that I tossed in the question about the bills.

Luck or not, it hit. She gripped my knee with one of the hands she used so well and said, "My God, the bills. Do they show fingerprints?"

"Certainly."

"Where are they?"

"In the safe in Mr. Wolfe's office. Also the photographs."

"I only gave her one. You said three."

"The other two are from magazines. When did you give it to her?"

"I - I don't remember. There are so many…"

My left hand moved to rest on the coverlet where her leg was, above her knee, the fingers bending, naturally, to the curve of the surface they were touching. Of course it would have been a mistake if I had given the hand a definite order to do that, but I hadn't. I'm not blaming the hand; it was merely taking advantage of an opportunity that no alert hand could be expected to ignore; but it got a quicker and bigger reaction than it had counted on. When that woman had an impulse she wasted no time. As she came up from the pillow I met her, I guess on the theory that she was going to claw, but her arms clamped around my neck and she took me back with her, and there I was, on top of her from the waist up, my face into the pillow. She was biting the side of my neck, not to hurt, just cordial.

The time, the place, and the girl is a splendid combination, but it takes all three. The place was okay, but the time wasn't, since I.had other errands, and I doubted if the girl's motives were pure. She was more interested in a cigarette case, a photograph, and some five-dollar bills than in me. Also I don't like to be bullied. So I brought my hand up, slipped it between her face and my neck, shoved her head into the pillow while raising mine, folded the ends of the pillow over, and had her smothered. She squirmed and kicked for ten seconds and then stopped. I got my feet on the floor and my weight on them, removed my hands from the pillow, and stepped back. I spoke.

"When did you give her the photograph?"

She was panting, gasping, to catch up on oxygen. When she could she said, "Damn you, you put your hand on me."

"Yeah. Do you expect me to apologize? Patting a place on the bed for me to sit and you in that gauzy thing? You know darned well your nipples show through it. That wasn't very smart, trying to take my mind off of my work when you've got as much at stake as I have." I sat on the chair. "Look, Miss Duncan. The only way you can possibly get clear is by helping Nero Wolfe wrap it up, and we haven't got all summer. We may not even have all day. I want to know about the photograph and the five-dollar bills."

She had got her breath back and pulled the coverlet up to her chin. "You did put your hand on me," she said.

"Conditioned reflex. The wonder is it wasn't both hands. When did you give her the photograph?"

"A long time ago. Nearly a year ago. She sent a note to my dressing room at a Saturday matinee. The note said she had seen me at her house and she would like to have three tickets for next Saturday so she could bring two friends. At the bottom below her name was her address. That address… I had her sent in. She was incredible. I have never seen a girl as beautiful. I thought she was - that she had been…"

I nodded. "A guest in that room. I don't think so."

"Neither did I after I talked with her. She said she had seen me in the hall - twice, she said - and she had recognized me from pictures she had seen. She said she had never told anyone, and she wouldn't, and I gave her an autographed picture and the three tickets. That was in June, and in July we closed for a month for summer vacation, and in August she came to see me again. She was even more beautiful, she was incredible. She wanted three more tickets, and I said I'd mail them to her, and then she said she had decided she ought to have hush money. That's what she said, hush money. Five dollars a month. I was to mail it to her the first of each month, to a branch post office on Eighty-third Street, the Planetarium Station. Have you ever seen her?"

"Yes."

"Then aren't you surprised?"

"No. I quit being surprised after two years of detective work, long ago."

"I was. A girl as beautiful and proud as she was - my God, she was proud. And of course I - well, I supposed that would be only a start. Ever since then I have been expecting her to come again, to tell me she had decided five dollars a month wasn't enough, but she never did."

"You never saw her again?"

"No, but she saw me. She had told me what she did; when she heard the street door open she put out the light in her room and opened the door a crack, and after that when I went there I saw it when I went down the hall, her door open a little. It gave me a feeling - I don't know why - it made it more exciting that she was there looking at me." She patted the bed. "Sit here."

I stood up. "No, ma'am. It's even more of a strain when you have the cover up like that, because I know what's under it. I have chores to do. How many five-dollar bills did you send her?"

"I didn't count. It was in August, so the first one was September first, and then every month." The coverlet slipped down.

"Including May? Twelve days ago?"

"Yes."

"That makes nine. They're in Mr. Wolfe's safe. I told Mrs. Perez she'd get them back some day, but since they were hush money you have a valid claim.'' I took a step, stretched an arm, curved my fingers around her leg, and gave it a gentle squeeze. "See? Conditioned reflex. I'd better go." I turned and walked out. Mike, the female sergeant, appeared from somewhere as I reached the foyer, but let me open the door myself. Down in the lobby I took a moment to tell the hall-man, "You can relax. We found them in her jewel box. The maid thought they were earrings." It pays to be on sociable terms with lobby sentries. As I emerged to the sidewalk my watch said 3:40, so Wolfe would be in the office, and I found a phone booth down the block and dialed.

His voice came. "Yes?" He will not answer the phone properly.

"Me. In a booth on Madison Avenue. Money paid to a blackmailer is recoverable, so those bills belong to Meg Duncan. Maria Perez spotted her in the hall a year ago and went to see her and bled her for nine months, five bucks per month. One of the biggest operations in the history of crime. Meg Duncan worked last night and went straight home from the theater and went to bed. I saw the bed and sat on it. Probably true, say twenty to one. From here it's only about eight minutes to the Yeager house. Shall I go there first?"

"No. Mrs. Yeager phoned, and I told her you would be there between five and six. She expects you to take her to see that room. Your problem."

"Don't I know it. You said when I called in you might want to send me to Saul or Fred or Orrie.''

"I thought it possible, but no. Proceed." As I went out to the curb to flag a taxi I was reflecting on Maria's practical horse sense and fine feeling. If you happen to have ah autographed photograph of a person whom you are screwing for hush money, you don't keep it. The autographer had of course written something like "Best regards" or "All good wishes," and now that she was your victim it wouldn't be right to hang on to it.