Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02 - The League of Frightened Men Read online

  I took the book over and handed it to him, and he opened it and began skimming.

  “The Shepheardes Calender, I am certain, and I think September. Not that it matters; even if I find it, a petty triumph scarcely worth the minutes I waste. You will forgive me, Miss Hibbard? Bulls that bene bate … Cocke on his dunghill. … This wolvish sheepe would catchen his pray … no, certainly not that. Beasts here and there, but not the catalogue in my memory. I shall forgo the triumph; it isn’t here. Anyway, it was pleasant to meet Spenser again, even for so brief a nod.” He slid forward in his chair, to a perilous extreme, to hand the book to Miss Hibbard. “A fine example of bookmaking, worth a glance of friendship from you. Printed of course in London, but bound in this city by a Swedish boy who will probably starve to death during the coming winter.”

  She summoned enough politeness to look at it, turn it over in her hand, glance inside, and look at the backbone again. Wolfe was back at the papers he had taken from the file. She was obviously through with the book, so I got up and took it and returned it to the shelf.

  Wolfe was saying, “Miss Hibbard. I know that what you want is action, and doubtless I have tried your patience. I am sorry. If I might ask you a few questions?”

  “Certainly. It seems to me—”

  “Of course. Pardon me. Only two questions, I think. First, do you know whether your uncle recently took out any life insurance?”

  She nodded impatiently. “But, Mr. Wolfe, that has nothing to do with—”

  He broke in to finish for her, “With the totalitarian evil of Paul Chapin. I know. Possibly not. Was it a large amount of insurance?”

  “I think so. Yes. Very large.”

  “Were you the beneficiary?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. He told me you spoke to him of insurance. Then, about a week ago, he told me he had rushed it through and they had distributed it among four companies. I didn’t pay much attention because my mind was on something else. I was angry with him and was trying to persuade him … I suppose my sister Ruth and I were the beneficiaries.”

  “Not Paul Chapin?”

  She looked at him, and opened her mouth and closed it again. She said, “That hadn’t occurred to me. Perhaps he would. I don’t know.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Yes, a sentimental romantic might do that. Now, the second question. Why did you come to see me? What do you want me to do?”

  She gave him her eyes straight. “I want you to find proof of Paul Chapin’s guilt, and see that he pays the penalty. I can pay you for it. You told my uncle ten thousand dollars. I can pay that.”

  “Do you have a personal hostility for Mr. Chapin?”

  “Personal?” She frowned. “Is there any other kind of hostility except personal? I don’t know. I hate Paul Chapin, and have hated him for years, because I loved my uncle and my sister Ruth loved him and he was a fine sensitive generous man, and Paul Chapin was ruining his life. Ruined his life … oh … now …”

  “There, Miss Hibbard. Please. You did not intend to engage me to find your uncle? You had no hope of that?”

  “I think not. Oh, if you do! If you do that … I think I have no hope, I think I dare not. But then—even if you find him, there will still be Paul Chapin.”

  “Just so.” Wolfe sighed, and turned his eyes to me. “Archie. Please wrap up Miss Hibbard’s file for her. If I have not placed the contents in their proper compartments, she will forgive me. The paper and string are intact? Good.”

  She was protesting, “But you will need that—I’ll leave it—”

  “No, Miss Hibbard. I’m sorry. I can’t undertake your commission.”

  She stared at him. He said, “The affair is in the hands of the police and the District Attorney. I would be hopelessly handicapped. I shall have to bid you good day.”

  She found her tongue. “Nonsense. You don’t mean it.” She exploded, forward in her chair. “Mr. Wolfe, it’s outrageous! I’ve told you all about it … you’ve asked me and I’ve told you … the reason you give is no reason at all … why—”

  He stopped her, with his finger wiggling and the quality in his voice, without raising it, that always got me a little sore because I never understood how he did it. “Please, Miss Hibbard. I have said no, and I have given you my reason. That is sufficient. If you will just take the package from Mr. Goodwin. Of course I am being rude to you, and on such occasions I always regret that I do not know the art of being rude elegantly. I have all the simplicities, including that of brusqueness.”

  But he got up from his chair, which, though she didn’t know it, was an extraordinary concession. She, on her feet too, had taken the package from me and was mad as hell. Before turning to go, though, she realized that she was more helpless than she was mad. She appealed to him:

  “But don’t you see, this leaves me … what can I do?”

  “I can make only one suggestion. If you have made no other arrangements and still wish my services, and the police have made no progress, come to see me next Wednesday.”

  “But that’s four whole days—”

  “I’m sorry. Good day, Miss Hibbard.”

  I went to open the door for her, and she certainly had completely forgotten about her eyelashes.

  When I got back to the office Wolfe was seated again, with what I supposed Andrew Hibbard would have called the stigmata of pleasure. His chin was up, and he was making little circles with the tip of his finger on the arm of his chair. I came to a stop by his desk, across from him, and said:

  “That girl’s mad. I would say, on a guess, she’s about one-fifth as mad as I am.”

  He murmured, “Archie. For a moment, don’t disturb me.”

  “No, sir. I wouldn’t for anything. A trick is okay, and a deep trick is the staff of life for some people, but where you’ve got us to at present is wallowing in the unplumbed depths of—wait a minute, I’ll look it up, I think it’s in Spenser.”

  “Archie, I warn you, some day your are going to become dispensable.” He stirred a little. “If you were a woman and I were married to you, which God forbid, no amount of space available on this globe, to separate us, would put me at ease. I regret the necessity for my rudeness to Miss Hibbard. It was desirable to get rid of her without delay, for there is a great deal to be done.”

  “Good. If I can help any—”

  “You can. Your notebook, please. Take a telegram.”

  I sat down. I wasn’t within a hundred miles of it, and that always irritated me. Wolfe dictated:

  “Regarding recent developments and third Chapin warning you are requested to attend meeting this address nine o’clock Monday evening November fifth without fail. Sign it Nero Wolfe and address.”

  “Sure.” I had it down. “Just send it to anybody I happen to think of?”

  Wolfe had lifted up the edge of his desk blotter and taken a sheet of paper from underneath and was pushing it at me. He said, “Here are the names. Include those in Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington; those farther away can be informed later by letter. Also, make a copy of the list; two—one for the safe. Also—”

  I had taken the paper from him and a glance showed what it was. I stared at him, and I suppose something in my face stopped him. He interrupted himself, “Reserve your disapproval, Archie. Save your fake moralities for your solitude.”

  I said, “So that’s why you had me get the Spenser, so she would have something to look at. Why did you steal it?”

  “I borrowed it.”

  “You say. I’ve looked in the dictionary. That’s what I mean, why didn’t you borrow it? She would have let you have it.”

  “Probably not.” Wolfe sighed. “I didn’t care to risk it. In view of your familiarity with the finer ethical points, you must realize that I couldn’t very well accept her as a client and then propose to others, especially to a group—”

  “Sure, I see that all right. Now that the notion you entertained has drifted in on me, I’d have my hat off if I had one on. But she’d have let you have it. Or you could have got the dope—”

  “That will do, Archie.” He got a faint tone on. “We shall at any rate be acting in her interest. It appears likely that this will be a complicated and expensive business, and there is no reason why Miss Hibbard should bear the burden alone. In a few minutes I shall be going upstairs, and you will be fairly busy. First, send the telegrams and copy the list. Then—take this, a letter to Miss Hibbard, sign my name and mail it this evening by special delivery: I find that the enclosed paper did not get back into your file this afternoon, but remained on my desk. I trust that its absence has not caused you any inconvenience. If you are still of a mind to see me next Wednesday, do not hesitate to call upon me.”

  “Yes, sir. Send her the list.”

  “Naturally. Be sure your copies are correct. Make three copies. I believe you know the home address of Mr. Higgam of the Metropolitan Trust Company?”

  I nodded. “Up at Sutton—”

  “Find him tomorrow and give him a copy of the list. Ask him to procure first thing Monday morning a financial report on the men listed. No history is required; their present standing is the point. For those in other cities, telegraph. We want the information by six o’clock Monday.”

  “Hibbard’s name is here. Maybe the other dead ones.”

  “The bank’s ingenuity may discover them, and not disturb their souls. Get in touch with Saul Panzer and tell him to report here Monday evening at eight-thirty. Durkin likewise. Find out if Gore and Cather and two others—your selection—will be available for Tuesday morning.”

  I grinned. “How about the Sixty-first Regiment?”

  “They will be our reserve. As soon as you have sent the telegrams, phone Miss Hibbard at her home. Try until you get her. Employ your charm. Make an appointment to call on her this evening. If you get to see her, tell her that you regret that I refused her commission, and that you have my leave to offer her your assistance if she wishes it. It will save time. It will afford you an opportunity to amass a collection of facts from her, and possibly even a glance through the papers and effects of Mr. Hibbard. Chiefly for any indication of an awareness on his part that he would not soon return. We are of course in agreement with some of the tendencies of the law; for instance, its reluctance to believe a man dead merely because he is not visible on the spot he is accustomed to occupy.”

  “Yes, sir. Take my own line with her?”

  “Any that suggests itself.”

  “If I go up there I could take the list along.”

  “No, mail it.” Wolfe was getting up from his chair. I watched him; it was always something to see. Before he got started for the door, I asked:

  “Maybe I should know this, I didn’t get it. What was the idea asking her about the life insurance?”

  “That? Merely the possibility that we were encountering a degree of vindictive finesse never before reached in our experience. Chapin’s hatred, diluted of course, extended from the uncle to the niece. He learned of the large sum she would receive in insurance, and in planning Hibbard’s murder planned also that the body would not be discovered; and the insurance money would not be paid her.”

  “It would some day.”

  “But even a delay in an enemy’s good fortune is at least a minor pleasure. Worth such a finesse if you have it in you. That was the possibility. And another one: let us say Chapin himself was the beneficiary. Miss Hibbard was sure he would kill her uncle, would evade discovery, and would collect a huge fortune for his pains. The thought was intolerable. So she killed her uncle herself—he was about to die in any event—and disposed of the body so that it could not be found. You might go into that with her this evening.”

  I said, “You think I won’t? I’ll get her alibi.”

  Chapter 4

  There was plenty doing Saturday evening and Sunday. I saw Evelyn Hibbard and had three hours with her, and got Saul and Fred and the other boys lined up, and had a lot of fun on the telephone, and finally got hold of Higgam the bank guy late Sunday evening after he returned from a Long Island week-end. The phone calls were from members of the league who had got the telegrams. There were five or six that phoned, various kinds; some scared, some sore, and one that was apparently just curious. I had made several copies of the list, and as the phone calls came I checked them off on one and made notes. The original, Hibbard’s, had a date at the top, February 16, 1931, and was typewritten. Some of the addresses had been changed later with a pen, so evidently it had been kept up-to-date. Four of the names had no addresses at all, and of course I didn’t know which ones were dead. The list was like this, leaving out the addresses and putting in the business or profession as we got it Monday from the bank:

  Andrew Hibbard, psychologist

  Ferdinand Bowen, stockbroker

  Loring A. Burton, doctor

  Eugene Dreyer, art dealer

  Alexander Drummond, florist

  George R. Pratt, politician

  Nicholas Cabot, lawyer

  Augustus Farrell, architect

  Wm. R. Harrison, judge

  Fillmore Collard, textile-mill owner

  Edwin Robert Byron, magazine editor

  L. M. Irving, social worker

  Lewis Palmer, Federal Housing Administration

  Julius Adler, lawyer

  Theodore Gaines, banker

  Pitney Scott, taxi-driver

  Michael Ayers, newspaperman

  Arthur Kommers, sales manager

  Wallace McKenna, congressman from Illinois

  Sidney Lang, real estate

  Roland Erskine, actor

  Leopold Elkus, surgeon

  F. L. Ingalls, travel bureau

  Archibald Mollison, professor

  Richard M. Tuttle, boys’ school

  T. R. Donovan

  Phillip Leonard

  Allan W. Gardner

  Hans Weber

  For the last four there were no addresses, and I couldn’t find them in the New York or suburban phone books, so I couldn’t ask the bank for a report. Offhand, I thought, reading the names and considering that they were all Harvard men, which meant starting better than scratch on the average, offhand it looked pretty juicy; but the bank reports would settle that. It was fun stalling them on the phone.

  But the real fun Sunday came in the middle of the afternoon. Someone had leaked on Hibbard’s disappearance and the Sunday papers had it, though they didn’t give it a heavy play. When the doorbell rang around three o’clock and I answered it because I happened to be handy and Fritz was busy out back, and I saw two huskies standing there shoulder to shoulder, I surmised at first glance it was a couple of bureau dicks and someone had got curious about me up at Hibbard’s the night before. Then I recognized one of them and threw the door wide with a grin.

  “Hello, hello. You late from church?”

  The one on the right spoke, the one with a scar on his cheek I had recognized. “Nero Wolfe in?”

  I nodded. “You want to see him? Leap the doorsill, gentlemen.”

  While I was closing the door and putting the chain on they were taking off their hats and coats and hanging them on the rack. Then they were running their hands over their hair and pulling their vests down and clearing their throats. They were as nervous as greenhorns on their first tail. I was impressed. I was so used to Wolfe myself and so familiar with his prowess that I was apt to forget the dents some of his strokes had made on some tough professional skulls. I asked them to wait in the hall and went to the office and told Wolfe that Del Bascom of the Bascom Detective Agency was there with one of his men and wanted to see him.

  “Did you ask them what they wanted?”

  “No.”

  Wolfe nodded, and I went out and brought them in. Bascom went across to the desk to shake hands; the other gentleman got his big rumpus onto a chair I shoved up, but nearly missed it on the way down on account of staring at Wolfe. I suspected he wasn’t overwhelmed by prestige as much as he was by avoirdupois, having never seen Wolfe before.

  Bascom was saying, “It’s been nearly two years since I’ve seen you, Mr. Wolfe. Remember? The hay fever case. That’s what I called it. Remember the clerk that didn’t see the guy lifting the emeralds because he was sneezing?”

  “I do indeed, Mr. Bascom. That young man had invention, to employ so common an affliction for so unusual a purpose.”

  “Yeah. Lots of ’em are smart, but very few of them is quite smart enough. That was quite a case. I’d have been left scratching my ear for a bite if it hadn’t been for you. I’ll never forget that. Is business pretty good with you, Mr. Wolfe?”

  “No. Abominable.”

  “I suppose so. We’ve got to expect it. Some of the agencies are doing pretty well on industrial work, but I never got into that. I used to be a workingman myself. Hell, I still am.” Bascom crossed his legs and cleared his throat. “You taken on anything new lately?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No.”

  I nearly jumped at the squeak, it was so unexpected. It came from the other dick, his chair between Bascom and me. He squeaked all of a sudden:

  “I heard different.”

  “Well, who opened your valve?” Bascom glared at him, disgusted. “Did I request you to clamp your trap when we came in here?” He turned to Wolfe. “Do you know what’s eating him? You’ll enjoy this, Mr. Wolfe. He’s heard a lot of talk about the great Nero Wolfe, and he wanted to show you haven’t got him buffaloed.” He shifted and turned on the glare again. “You sap.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Yes, I enjoy that. I like bravado. You were saying, Mr. Bascom?”

  “Yeah. I might as well come to the point. It’s like this. I’m on a case. I’ve got five men on it. I’m pulling down close to a thousand dollars a week, four weeks now. When I wind it up I’ll get a fee that will keep me off of relief all winter. I’m getting it sewed up. About all I need now is some wrapping paper and a piece of string.”