Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 09 - Black Orchids Page 3

  “There’s your cane.”

  Hewitt stood and looked at it and demanded, “How in the name of heaven did it get there?”

  And by gum, Wolfe told me to pick it up for him! I should have resigned on the spot, but I didn’t want to make a scene in front of Hewitt, so I stopped and grabbed it. There was a piece of green string looped on the crook and I brushed it off and extended the crook end toward Hewitt, controlling an impulse to jab him in the ribs. He thanked me democratically and we went on.

  “Curious,” Hewitt said. “I certainly didn’t leave it there. Very odd.”

  A door ahead of us opened and a man emerged. The door had a card on it, UPDEGRAFF NURSERIES, and the man was the twig-snitcher, Fred Updegraff. At sight of us he stopped, and stood there as we went by. A little farther on, after passing two more doors with exhibitors’ cards on them, I swerved to one that wasn’t labeled and turned the knob and opened it.

  “Where are you going?” Wolfe demanded.

  “The water nymph. The pool episode. I thought you might—”

  “Bosh. That bedlam—”

  “It’s really worth seeing,” Hewitt declared. “Charming. Perfectly charming. Really delightful. I’ll come too.”

  He headed for the door I was holding open, and Wolfe followed him like an orderly after a colonel, his hands full of potted plants. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been disgusting. I kept in front so as not to have to look at him.

  At the glade the audience was five and six deep around the ropes to the point on either side where the bushes were in the way, but all three of us were tall enough to get a good view. Anne was putting on a swell performance, dabbling with her toes and swishing around. Her knees were beautiful. I was proud of her. Harry was stretched out in the usual spot for his nap, his head on a grassy mound alongside the rocks and bushes, with a newspaper over his face. The audience was chattering. Anne kicked water onto a cluster of flowers that hung over the pool, and glistening drops fell from the petals.

  “Charming,” Hewitt said.

  “Delightful,” Wolfe said. “Archie, will you kindly take these plants? Be very careful—”

  Pretending not to hear him, I moved off to the right. Partly I thought he needed some ignoring, but also I wanted to get a better look at Harry’s right leg and foot. They were twisted into a strange and unnatural position for a man pretending to take a nap. I stretched tiptoe to get a good look over heads and hats and decided that either his shoe hurt him or he was doing a yogi leg exercise, and went back to Anne just as she took another glance at her wrist watch. She swished once more, swung her feet out of the pool, cast a mischievous eye on her companion, reached into the pool with her cupped hand, and sloshed water over Harry’s shirt. The audience screeched with glee.

  But Harry didn’t take his cue. He was supposed to jerk himself up and blink and look mad, but he didn’t move. Anne stared at him in astonishment. Someone called:

  “Douse him again!”

  I had a quick hunch it wasn’t funny, with his leg twisted like that. Pushing through to the front, I got over the rope. As I started across the grass a guard yelled at me, and so did some of the spectators, but I kept going and was bent over Harry when the guard grabbed my arm.

  “Hey, you—”

  “Shut up.” I shook him off and lifted the newspaper enough to see Harry’s face, and after one glimpse dropped the paper back over it. As I did that I sniffed. I thought I smelled something, a faint something that I recognized.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” a voice above me asked.

  It was the first time I had ever heard Anne’s voice, but I didn’t reply or look up at her because I was seeing something about the moss which clung to the face of the rocks just back of Harry’s head. On account of the shrubs and rocks I couldn’t get around to see the top of his head, so I reached a hand to feel of it, and the end of my finger went right into a hole in his skull, away in, and it was like sticking your finger into a warm apple pie. I pulled away and started wiping my finger off on the grass, and realized with a shock that the two white things there were Anne’s bare feet. I nearly got blood on them.

  Chapter 3

  I stood up and told Anne, “Put on your shoes and stockings.”

  “What—”

  “Do as I tell you.” I had the guard by the sleeve and stabbed into his sputtings, “Get a cop.” By the way his mouth fell open I saw he was too dumb even for something as simple as that without a fireside chat, so I turned to call to Hewitt and there was Fred Updegraff inside the ropes headed for us. His eyes were on Anne, but when I intercepted him and told him to get a cop he about-faced without a word and went. Wolfe’s voice barked above the din:

  “What the devil are you doing in there?”

  I ignored him again and raised my voice to address the multitude: “Ladies and gentlemen. That’s all for today. Mr. Gould has had an attack. If you’re sensible you’ll go and look at flowers. If you’re morbid or have got the itch you’ll stay where you are—outside the ropes—”

  A flash bulb flared at the left. Sympathetic murmurs arose, but they seemed to be a hundred percent morbid. At the right a guy with a camera came diving under the rope, but that was something for which arrangements had already been made inside the guard’s head and he responded promptly and adequately. I was gratified to see that Anne appeared to have a modicum of wits. She must have seen the color of what I had wiped from my finger, but she was sitting on the grass getting her feet shod, hastily but efficiently.

  “Archie!” Wolfe’s voice came in his most menacing tone. I knew what was eating him. He wanted me to get out of there and drive him home, and he thought I was showing off, and he knew I was sore. As he called my name again I turned my back on him to welcome the law. A big flatfoot with no neck shoved through the crowd to the rope and got over it and strode across the grass. I blocked his way at Harry’s feet.

  “What’s wrong with him?” he asked gruffly.

  I moved aside and let him pass. He stopped and got a corner of the newspaper and jerked it off.

  “Archie!” Wolfe bellowed.

  Some of the spectators could see Harry’s face and they were reacting. The ropes were bellied in, taut, with the pressure from behind. The guard was charging across the grass at them and Anne was on her feet again and Fred Updegraff was there.

  “Hell, he’s dead,” the cop said.

  “You guessed it,” I conceded. “Shall I get some help?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I won’t say that I already knew things I didn’t know, but I already had stirrings above the ears and, besides, I didn’t want Wolfe to bust a lung, so I went that way and found him standing with Hewitt a few paces to the rear of the throng.

  “Hold everything,” I muttered to him.

  “Confound you—”

  “I said hold everything.” I cantered off to the phone booths at the front of the room, parted with a nickel and dialed a number and got connected with Extension 19, gave my name and asked for Inspector Cramer. His voice came:

  “What do you want?”

  “Me? Nothing. I’m helping with the chores. Wolfe and I are up at the Flower Show—”

  “I’m busy!”

  “Okay. Now you’re busier. Rucker and Dill’s exhibit, third floor, Flower Show. Man murdered. Shot through the top of the head. Lying there on the grass guarded by one bull-necked bull who will never be an inspector. That’s all.”

  “Wait a min—”

  “Can’t. I’m busy.”

  I slid out of the booth and dodged through the traffic back across the room. In that short time the mob surrounding the glade had doubled in size. A glance showed me that the cop and the guard had got reinforcements and Anne and Fred Updegraff were not in sight, and Wolfe and Hewitt had retreated to the other side of the rose garden next door. W. G. Dill was with them. Wolfe glared at me as I approached. He was still hanging onto those measly plants and was speechless with rage.

  “… fee
l a sort of responsibility,” Hewitt was saying. “I am Honorary Chairman of the Committee. I don’t like to shirk responsibility, but what can I do—just look at them—”

  “That policeman,” Dill said. “Imbecile. Wouldn’t let me in my own exhibit. Broke my shoulder blade. It feels like it.” He worked his shoulder up and down, grimacing. “There’s the doctor—no—”

  “A doctor won’t help any. He’s dead.”

  They looked at me. Dill stopped working his shoulder. “Dead? Dead!” He darted off and burrowed into the crowd.

  “You said he had an attack,” Hewitt regarded me accusingly. “How can he be dead? What did he die of?”

  “He ceased breathing.”

  “Archie,” Wolfe said in his most crushing tone. “Stop that. I asked you an hour ago to take these plants. Take them, and take me home.”

  “Yes, sir.” I took the plants. “But I can’t leave yet. I’m looking—”

  “Good heavens,” Hewitt said. “What a calamity … poor Dill … I must see … excuse me …” He marched off towards the main stair.

  At that instant I caught sight of an object I had been halfway expecting to see. I only got a glimpse of the gray coat with its collar of 14th Street squirrel, for she came from the other side and disappeared into the crowd. I put the pots on the floor at the edge of the rose garden and dashed off before Wolfe could say a word. I didn’t care how sore it made him because he had it coming to him after his degrading performance with Hewitt, but I admit I glanced back over my shoulder as I went to see if he was throwing something. His face was purple. I’ll bet he lost ten pounds that afternoon.

  I skirted the throng and went into it on the other side. In a minute I saw her, squirming through to the front. I took it easy working through to her because I didn’t want to make myself conspicuous, and, getting right behind her, saw that the blue leather bag was under her right arm. I shifted Wolfe’s coat to my own right arm and under its cover got my fingers on the end of the bag and pulled gently. It started coming, and she was so interested in what she was trying to see around the people still in front of her that she didn’t notice it even when the bag was out from under her arm and safely under Wolfe’s coat. I kept an eye on her as I backed out, apologizing to the flower lovers as I went, and as soon as I was in the clear turned and made for the stairs.

  In the men’s room on the second floor I spent a nickel to achieve privacy and sat down and opened the bag, which was monogrammed “RL.” It inventoried about as usual, handkerchief and compact and purse and so on, but it also had what I was after, her name and address. They were on an envelope addressed to Miss Rose Lasher, 326 Morrow Street, New York City, which checked with the RL on the bag. I copied it in my notebook. The letter inside was from Ellie and explained why she hadn’t paid back the two dollars. And another item was more than I had bargained for. It was a clipping from the Gazette of a picture of Harry and Anne playing mumblety-peg. It had cut edges, not torn, and was neatly folded.

  I put everything back in, went back to the third floor, worked my way into the crowd, not taking it so easy this time, found her in the front row against the rope, and put my hand on her shoulder. Her head twisted around.

  “Will you please—” she began indignantly.

  “Okay, sister. It’s me. Here’s your bag.”

  “My bag!”

  “You dropped it and I risked life and limb to get it. It’s yours, isn’t it?”

  “Sure it’s mine!” She grabbed it.

  “Say think you.”

  She mumbled something and was through with me. I glanced at the scene. The cast had been augmented. The contents of two radio police cars, four of them in uniform, were there in the glade, one of them standing at Harry’s feet watching a doctor, who was on his knees applying a stethoscope. W. G. Dill stood at the cop’s side, his hands in his pockets, scowling. There was no sign that anyone had got interested in the moss on the rocks. I backed out again without bruising anyone seriously and circled around to the rose garden to rejoin Wolfe.

  He wasn’t there.

  He was gone. The two pots were there on the floor, but he wasn’t anywhere.

  The damn hippopotamus, I thought. He’ll get lost. He’ll be kidnapped. He’ll fall in a hole. He’ll catch cold.

  I went back down to the men’s room on the second floor and yelled his name in front of the private apartments, but no soap. I went up to the fourth, to the orchid benches. No. I went down to the ground floor and out the main exit and to where I had parked the car on 46th Street, but he wasn’t in it. It was trying to snow in March gusts. I spat at a snowflake as it sailed by. Our little Nero, I thought, out on such a night and no coat. The bag fat flumpus. I’ll put salt on his grapefruit. It was a quarter past five.

  I stood and applied logic to it. Had he taken a taxi home? Not the way he hated taxis. What, as I had left him standing there, what had been his most burning desires? That was easy. To shoot me, to sit down, and to drink beer. He couldn’t shoot me because I wasn’t there. Where might he have found a chair?

  I went back and paid four bits to get in again, mounted one flight, and made my way across the grain of the traffic to the corner of the room where a door said OFFICE. People were standing around, and one of them plucked at my sleeve as I put my hand on the knob, and I recognized him. It was the gray-haired geezer I had seen on previous days looking at Anne from a distance as if he was saying his prayers. He looked worried under an old felt hat, and his fingers on my sleeve were trembling.

  “Please,” he said, “if you’re going in there will you please give this to Miss Anne Tracy?”

  “Is she in there?”

  “Yes, she went in—I saw her go in—”

  I took the folded piece of paper and said I’d see that Miss Tracy got it, opened the door and entered, and was in an anteroom containing a tired-looking woman at a desk. I smiled at her irresistibly to keep her quiet, unfolded the piece of paper, and read what it said.

  Dear daughter,

  I hope there is no serious trouble. I am outside here.

  If there is anything I can do let me know.

  Your father.

  It was written with a pencil on cheap white paper. I folded it up again, thinking that one of the first jobs to tackle would be to buy my father-in-law a new hat.

  “Do you want something?” the woman at the desk asked in a sad and skeptical tone. I told her I had an important message for Miss Anne Tracy, and she opened her mouth and then decided not to use it any more and motioned to one of three doors. I opened it and passed through, and the first thing I saw was Nero Wolfe sitting in a chair almost big enough for him, with a tray on a table beside him holding four beer bottles, and a glass in his hand.

  You can’t beat logic.

  On another chair right in front of him, facing him, was Anne. Propped against a desk at the left was Lewis Hewitt. A man I didn’t know was at another desk writing something, and another one was standing by a window with Fred Updegraff.

  Wolfe saw me enter. I saw him see me. But he went on talking to Anne without dropping a stitch:

  “… a matter of nerves, yes, but primarily it depends on oxygenation of the blood. The most remarkable case of self-control I ever saw was in Albania in 1915, displayed by a donkey, I mean a four-legged donkey, which toppled over a cliff—”

  I was standing by him. “Excuse me,” I said icily. “For you, Miss Tracy.” I extended the paper.

  She looked up at me, looked at the paper, took it, unfolded it, and read it.

  “Oh,” she said. She glanced around and looked up at me again. “Where is he?”

  “Outside.”

  “But I …” Her brow wrinkled. “Would you tell him … no … I’ll go …”

  She got up and started for the door. I went to open it for her, saw that Hewitt had the same intention, quickened my step, beat him to the knob, and swung it open. Anne was walking through, and then she wasn’t. A man barging through from the other side ran smack into h
er and nearly knocked her over, and I grabbed her arm to help her get her balance. I beat Hewitt to that too.

  “Pardon me,” the intruder said. His eyes swept the room and everything in it and went back to Anne. “Are you Anne Tracy?”

  “She is Miss Anne Tracy,” Hewitt said, “and that is scarcely the way—”

  Anne was sidling by to get to the door. The man put an arm out to stop her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to see my father.”

  “Where is he?”

  Another arm got in on it. Fred Updegraff arrived and his hand came out and contacted the intruder’s ribs and gave a healthy shove.

  “Learn some manners,” he said gruffly. “What business is—”

  “Permit me,” I interposed. “This is Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Squad.” I indicated another man on the door sill. “And Sergeant Purley Stebbins.”

  “Even so,” Lewis Hewitt said in a tone of displeasure. “It is scarcely necessary to restrain Miss Tracy by force. She merely wishes to speak with her father. I am Lewis Hewitt, Inspector. May I ask—”

  “Where is your father?”

  “Just outside the door,” I said.

  “Go with her, Purley. All right, Miss Tracy. Come back in here, please.”

  Purley went out at her heels. That cleared the doorway for another man to enter, W. G. Dill. His lips were in a thinner line than ever, and without looking at anybody or saying anything he crossed to a chair by the rear wall and sat down.

  “Hello, Wolfe,” Cramer said.

  “How do you do, Inspector.” With only two grunts, one under par, Wolfe got to his feet and moved forward. “Come, Archie. We’ll only be in the way.”

  “No,” Cramer said meaningly.

  “No?” Wolfe halted. “No what?”