Trio for Blunt Instruments

4

I GOT HOME well after midnight and before going up two flights to bed hit the refrigerator for leftover lobster and a glass of milk, to remove both hunger and the taste of the excuse for bread and stringy corned beef I had been supplied with at the DA’s office.

Since my connection with their homicide had been short and simple, the twenty seconds I had spent in the Kirk apartment, and my connection with Vance hadn’t been a lot longer, an hour of me should have been more than enough, including typing the statement for me to sign, and it wasn’t until after nine o’clock that I realized, from a question by Assistant DA Mandel, what the idea was. They actually thought that the tie thing might be some kind of dodge that I had been in on, and they were keeping me until they got a report on the stain. So I cooled down and took it easy, got on speaking terms with a dick who was put in a room with me to see that I didn’t jump out a window, got him to produce a deck for some friendly gin, and in two hours managed to lose $4.70. I called time at that point and paid him because he was getting sleepy and it would have been next to impossible to keep him ahead.

I got my money’s worth. Around midnight someone came and called him out, and when he returned ten minutes later and said I was no longer needed I gave him a friendly grin, a good loser, no hard feelings, and said, “So the blood’s the same type, huh?” And he nodded and said, “Yeah, modern science is wonderful.”

So, I told myself as I got the lobster out, I got not only my money’s worth but my time’s worth, and by the time I was upstairs and in my pajamas I had decided that if Wolfe wasn’t interested I certainly was, and I was going to find out who had sent me that tie even if I had to take a month’s leave of absence.

Except in emergencies I get a full eight hours’ sleep, and that was merely a project, not an emergency, so I didn’t get down for breakfast, which I eat in the kitchen, until after ten o’clock. As I got orange juice from the refrigerator and Fritz started the burner under the cake griddle he asked where I had dined, and I said he knew darned well I hadn’t dined at all, since I had phoned that I was at the DA’s office, and he nodded and said, “These clients in trouble.”

“Look, Fritz,” I told him, “you’re a chef, not a diplomat, so why do you keep that up? You know we’ve had no client for a month and you want to know if we’ve hooked one, so why don’t you just ask? Repeat after me, ‘Have we got a client?’ Try it.”

“Archie.” He turned a palm up. “You would have to say yes or no. The way I do it, you can biaiser if you wish.”

I had to ask him how to spell it so I could look it up when I went to the office. Sitting, I picked up the Times, and my brow went up when I saw that it had made the front page. Probably on account of Martin Kirk; the Times loves architects as much as it hates disk jockeys and private detectives. It had nothing useful to add to what I had got from Lon, but it mentioned that Mrs. Kirk had been born in Manhattan, Kansas. Any other paper which had dug up that detail would have had a feature piece about born in Manhattan and died in Manhattan.

After three griddle cakes with homemade sausage and one with thyme honey, and two cups of coffee, I made it to the office in time to have the desks dusted, fresh water in the vase, biaiser looked up, and the mail opened, when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms. I waited until the orchids were in the vase and he had sat and glanced through the mail to tell him that it now looked as if someone had sent me a hot piece of evidence in a homicide, and I intended to find out why, of course on my own time, and anyway he wouldn’t be needing me since apparently there was nobody that needed him.

His lips tightened. “Evidence? Merely a conjecture.”

“No, sir. I took it to Ludlow and it’s human blood. So I gave it to Cramer. Of course you’ve read the Times?”

“Yes.”

“The blood is the same type as Mrs. Kirk’s. If it was or is a floundering numskull, obviously I’d better see-”

The doorbell rang.

I got up and went, telling myself it was even money it was James Neville Vance, but it wasn’t. A glance at the one-way glass panel in the front door settled that. It was a panhandler who had run out of luck and started ringing doorbells-a tall, lanky one pretending he had to lean against the jamb to keep himself upright. Opening the door, I said politely, “It’s a hard life. Good morning.”

He got me in focus with bleary eyes and said, “I would like to see Nero Wolfe. My name is Martin Kirk.”

If you think I should have recognized him from the pictures Lon had shown me, I don’t agree. You should have seen him. I told him Mr. Wolfe saw people only by appointment, but I’d ask. “You’re the Martin Kirk who lives at Two-nineteen Horn Street?”

He said he was, and I invited him in, ushered him into the front room and to a seat, which he evidently needed, went to the office by way of the connecting door, closed the door, and crossed to Wolfe’s desk. “I’m on my own time now,” I told him. “It’s Martin Kirk. He asked to see you, but of course you’re not interested. May I use the front room?”

He took a deep breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth, then glared at me for five seconds and growled, “Bring him in.”

“But you don’t-”

“Bring him.”

Unheard of. Absolutely contrary to nature-his nature. The Nero Wolfe I thought I knew would at least have wanted me to pump him first. With a genius you never know. As I returned to the front room and told Kirk to come, I decided that the idea must be to show me that I would be a sap to waste my time. He would make short work of Martin Kirk. So as Kirk flopped into the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk he snapped at him, “Well, sir? I have read the morning paper. Why do you come to me?”

Kirk pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He groaned. He lowered his hands and the bleary eyes blinked a dozen times. “You’ll have to make allowances,” he said. “I just left the district attorney’s office. I was there all night and no sleep.”

“Have you eaten?”

“My God no.”

Wolfe made a face. That complicated it. The mere thought of a man going without food was disagreeable, and to have one there in his house was intolerable. He had to either get him out in a hurry or feed him. “Why should I make allowances?” he demanded.

Kirk actually tried to smile, and it made me want to feed him myself. “I know about you,” he said. “You’re hard. And you charge high fees. I can pay you, don’t worry about that. They think I killed my wife. They let me go, but they-”

“Did you kill your wife?”

“No. But they think I did, and they think they can prove it. I haven’t got a lawyer, and I don’t know any lawyer I want to go to. I came to you because I know about you-partly that, and partly because they asked me a lot of questions about you-about you and Archie Goodwin.” He looked at me, blinking to manage the change of focus. “You’re Archie Goodwin, aren’t you?”

I told him yes and he went back to Wolfe. “They asked if I knew you or Goodwin, if I had ever met you, and they seemed to think I had-no, they did think I had. It seemed to have some connection with something that was mailed to Goodwin, and something about a necktie, and something about a phone call he got yesterday. I’m sorry to be so vague, but I said you’d have to make allowances, I’m not myself. I haven’t been myself since-I found-” His jaw had started to work and he stopped to control it. “My wife,” he said. “They kept at me that she wasn’t much of a wife, and all right, she wasn’t, but if a woman- I mean if a man-”

He stopped again to handle his jaw. In a moment he went on, “So I came to you partly because I thought you might know about a necktie and a phone call and something that was mailed to Goodwin. Do you?”

“Possibly.” Wolfe was regarding him. “Mr. Kirk. You said you can pay me, but I don’t sell information; I sell only services.”

“That’s what I want, your services.”

“You want to hire me to investigate this affair?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m here.”

“And you can pay me without undue strain?”

“Yes. I have- Yes. Do you want a check now?”

“A thousand dollars will do as a retainer.”

I had to shut my eyes a second to keep from gawking. That wasn’t only unheard of, it was unbelievable. Taking on a job, which meant that he would have to work, without the usual dodging and stalling-that could be on account of the lag in receipts; but taking a murder suspect for a client offhand, no questions asked but the routine did you kill her and can you pay me, without the faintest notion whether he was guilty or not and how much the cops had on him-that simply wasn’t done, not by anybody, let alone Nero Wolfe. I had to clamp my teeth on my lip to sit and take it. As Kirk got out a checkfold and a pen Wolfe pushed a button on his desk, and in a moment Fritz came.

“A tray, please,” Wolfe told him. “The madrilene is ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the pudding?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A bowl of each, cheese with water cress, and hot tea.”

When Fritz turned and went I would have liked to go along, to tell him that there could be something worse than having no client.