Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 33 - Too Many Clients Read online

  Footsteps sounded, and as they approached she moved aside. It was a man, a chunky broad-shouldered guy two inches shorter than her, with a pug nose and bushy eyebrows. I stepped inside and greeted him. “My name’s Goodwin. From the Gazette. I want to rent a room, a front room.”

  He said to his daughter, “Go, Maria,” and she turned and went, down the dark hall. He turned to me. “No rooms.”

  “A hundred dollars a week,” I said. “I’m going to do an article on the scene of a murder after the murder. I want to take pictures of the people who come to look at it. A window on your second floor would be just the right angle.”

  “I said no rooms.” His voice was deep and rough.

  “You can shift someone around. Two hundred dollars.”

  “No.”

  “Three hundred.”

  “No.”

  “Five hundred.”

  “You’re crazy. No.”

  “I’m not crazy. You are. Snooting five hundred bucks. What’s your name?”

  “It’s my name.”

  “Oh for God’s sake. I can get it next door or from the cop out front. What’s wrong with it?”

  He half closed one eye. “Nothing is wrong with it. My name is Cesar Perez. I am a citizen of the United States of America.”

  “So am I. Will you rent me a room for one week for five hundred dollars in advance in cash?”

  “But what I said.” He gestured with both hands and both shoulders. “No room. That man out there dead, this is a bad thing. To take pictures of the people from this house, no. Even if there was a room.”

  I decided to be impetuous. Delay could actually be dangerous, since Homicide or the DA might uncover a connection between Yeager and this house any moment. Getting my case from my pocket and taking an item from it, I handed it to him. “Can you see in this light?” I asked.

  He didn’t try. “What is it?”

  “My license. I’m not a newspaperman, I’m a private detective, and I’m investigating the murder of Thomas G. Yeager.”

  He half closed an eye again. He poked the license at me, and I took it. His chest swelled with an intake of air. “You’re not a policeman?”

  “No.”

  “Then get out of here. Get out of this house. I have told three different policemen I don’t know anything about that man in the hole, and one of them insulted me. You get out.”

  “All right,” I said, “it’s your house.” I returned the license to the case and the case to my pocket. “But I’ll tell you what will happen if you bounce me. Within half an hour a dozen policemen will take the house over, with a search warrant. They’ll go over every inch of it. They’ll round up everybody here, beginning with you and your daughter, and they’ll nab everyone who enters. The reason they’ll do that is that I’ll tell them I can prove that Thomas G. Yeager came to this house Sunday evening and he was killed here.”

  “That’s a lie. Like that policeman. That’s insult.”

  “Okay. First I call to the cop out front to come in and stand by so you can’t warn anyone.” I turned. I had hit it. With the cops of course he had been set, but I had been unexpected and had caught him off balance. And he wasn’t a moron. He knew that even if I couldn’t prove it I must have enough to sick the law on him and the house.

  As I turned he reached and got my sleeve. I turned back, and he stood there, his jaw working. I asked, not hostile, just wanting to know, “Did you kill him?”

  “You’re a policeman,” he said.

  “I am not. My name is Archie Goodwin and I work for a private detective named Nero Wolfe. We expect to get paid for investigating this case, that’s how we make a living. So I’ll be honest; we would rather find out for ourselves why Yeager came here instead of having the police do it, but if you won’t cooperate I’ll have to call that cop in. Did you kill him?”

  He wheeled and started down the hall. I moved, got his shoulder, and yanked him around. “Did you kill him?”

  “I’ve got a knife,” he said. “In this house I’ve got a right to have it.”

  “Sure. I’ve got this.” I pulled the Marley from the holster. “And a permit for it. Did you kill him?”

  “No. I want to see my wife. She thinks better than I do. My wife and daughter. I want—”

  A door ten feet down the hall swung open, and a woman’s voice said, “We’re here, Cesar,” and there they were. The one coming was a tall grim-faced woman with an air of command. Maria stayed at the door. Perez started reeling off Spanish at his wife, but she broke in.

  “Stop it! He’ll think it’s secrets. With an American talk American.” She focused sharp black eyes on me. “We heard you. I knew this would come, only I thought it would be the police. My husband is an honest man. He did not kill Mr. Yeager. We call him Mr. House because it’s his house. How do you know?”

  I returned the Marley to the holster. “Since I do know, Mrs. Perez, does it matter how?”

  “No, I am a fool to ask. All right, ask questions.”

  “I’d rather have your husband answer them. It may take a while. If there’s a room with chairs?”

  “I’ll answer them. We sit down with friends. You after my husband with a gun.”

  “I was only showing off. Okay, if your legs can stand it mine can. What time did Mr. Yeager come here Sunday?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “I do. I’m finding out how you answer questions. If you answer too many of them wrong I’ll try your husband, or the police will.”

  She considered it a moment. “He came around seven o’clock.”

  “Did he come to see you or your husband or your daughter?”

  She glared. “No.”

  “Whom did he come to see?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t know.”

  “Try again. That’s silly. I’m not going to spend all day prying it out of you bit by bit.”

  She eyed me. “Have you ever been up there?”

  “I’m asking the questions, Mrs. Perez. Whom did he come to see?”

  “We don’t know.” She turned. “Go, Maria.”

  “But Mother, it’s not—”

  “Go!”

  Maria went, back inside, and shut the door. It was just as well, since it’s a strain to keep your eyes where they ought to be when they want to be somewhere else. Mother returned to me.

  “He came around seven o’clock and knocked on the door. That one.” She pointed to the door Maria had shut behind her. “He spoke to my husband and paid him some money. Then he went down the hall to the elevator. We don’t know if someone was up there or if someone came later. We were looking at the television, so we wouldn’t hear if someone came in and went to the elevator. Anyhow we weren’t supposed to know. The door in front has a good lock. So it’s not silly that we don’t know who he came to see.”

  “Where’s the elevator?”

  “In the back. It has a lock too.”

  “You asked if I have ever been up there. Have you?”

  “Of course. Every day. We keep it clean.”

  “Then you have a key. We’ll go up now.” I moved.

  She glanced at her husband, hesitated, glanced at me, went and opened the door Maria had closed and said something in Spanish, and started down the hall. Perez followed, and I brought up the rear. At the far end of the hall, clear back, she took a key from a pocket of her skirt and inserted it in the lock of a metal door, another Rabson lock. The door, either aluminum or stainless steel, slid open. That door certainly didn’t fit that hall, and neither did the inside of the elevator—more stainless steel, with red enameled panels on three sides. It was small, not even as large as Wolfe’s at home. It ascended, silent and smooth, I judged, right to the top floor, the door slid open, and we stepped out.

  For the second time in an hour I must have either gaped or gasped when Perez turned on the lights. I have seen quite a few rooms where people had gone all out, but that topped them all. It may have been partly the contrast with the neighborhood, the o
utside of the house, and the down below, but it would have been remarkable no matter where. The first impression was of silk and skin. The silk, mostly red but some pale yellow, was on the walls and ceiling and couches. The skin was on the girls and women in the pictures, paintings, that took a good third of the wall space. In all directions was naked skin. The pale yellow carpet, wall to wall, was silk too, or looked it. The room was enormous, twenty-five feet wide and the full length of the house, with no windows at either end. Headed to the right wall, near the center, was a bed eight feet square with a pale yellow silk coverlet. Since yellow was Wolfe’s pet color it was too bad he hadn’t come along. I sniffed the air. It was fresh enough, but it smelled. Air-conditioned, with built-in perfume.

  There weren’t many surfaces that would hold fingerprints—the tops of two tables, a TV console, a stand with a telephone. I turned to Mrs. Perez. “Have you cleaned here since Sunday night?”

  “Yes, yesterday morning.”

  That settled that. “Where’s the door to the stairs?”

  “No stairs.”

  “They’re boarded up below,” Perez said.

  “The elevator’s the only way to come up?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has it been like this?”

  “Four years. Since he bought the house. We had been here two years.”

  “How often did he come here?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Certainly you do, if you came up every day to clean. How often?”

  “Maybe once a week, maybe more.”

  I turned on Perez. “Why did you kill him?”

  “No.” He half closed an eye. “Me? No.”

  “Who did?”

  “We don’t know,” his wife said.

  I ignored her. “Look,” I told him. “I don’t want to turn you over unless I have to. Mr. Wolfe and I would prefer to keep you to ourselves. But if you don’t open up we’ll have no choice, and there may not be much time. They’ve got a lot of fingerprints from the tarpaulin that covered his body. I know he was killed in this house. If just one of those prints matches yours, good-by. You’re in. Since he was killed in this house, you know something. What?”

  He said to his wife, “Felita?”

  She was looking at me, her sharp black eyes into me. “You’re a private detective,” she said. “You told my husband that’s how you make a living. So we pay you. We have some money, not much. One hundred dollars.”

  “What do you pay me for?”

  “To be our detective.”

  “And detect what?”

  “We’ll tell you. We have the money downstairs.”

  “I’ll earn it first. All right, I’m your detective, but I can quit any time, for instance if I decide that you or your husband killed Yeager. What do you want me to detect?”

  “We want you to help us. What you said about the fingerprints. I told him he must put on gloves, but he didn’t. We don’t know how you know so much, but we know how it will be if you tell the police about this house. We did not kill Mr. House. Mr. Yeager. We don’t know who killed him. My husband took his dead body and put it in that hole because we had to. When he came Sunday evening he told my husband to go to Mondor’s at midnight and bring some things he had ordered, some caviar and roast pheasant and other things, and when my husband came up with them his dead body was here.” She pointed. “There on the floor. What could we do? It was secret that he came to this house. What would happen if we called a policeman? We knew what would happen. So now we pay you to help us. Perhaps more than one hundred dollars. You will know—”

  She whirled around. There had been a noise from the elevator, a click, and then a faint sound of friction, barely audible. Perez said, “It’s going down. Someone down there.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Who?”

  “We don’t know,” Mrs. Perez said.

  “Then we’ll see. Stay where you are, both of you.” I got the Marley out.

  “It’s a policeman,” Perez said.

  “No,” she said. “No key. He couldn’t have Mr. House’s keys because we took them.”

  “Shut up,” I told them. “If I’m your detective, do what I say. No talking and no moving.”

  We stood facing the elevator. I moved to the wall and put my back to it, arm’s length from the elevator door. Since it had been up when the visitor came and he had had to push the button to bring it down, he must know someone was up here and might come out with his finger on a trigger, which was where I had mine. The faint sound came again, then a click, the door opened, and out came a woman. Her back was to me as she faced Mrs. Perez.

  “Thank God,” she said, “it’s you. I thought it would be.”

  “We don’t know you,” Mrs. Perez said.

  I did. I had taken a step and got her profile. It was Meg Duncan, whom I had seen last week from a fifth-row seat on the aisle, in her star part in The Back Door to Heaven.

  Chapter 4

  If you ever have your pick of being jumped by a man your size or a woman who only comes to your chin, I advise you to make it the man. If he’s unarmed the chances are that the very worst he’ll do is floor you, but God knows what the woman will do. And you may floor him first, but you can’t plug a woman. Meg Duncan came at me exactly the way a cavewoman went at her man, or some other man, ten thousand years ago, her claws reaching for me and her mouth open ready to bite. There were only two alternatives, to get too far or too close, and too close is better. I rammed into her past the claws, against her, and wrapped her, and in one second the breath was all out of her. Her mouth stayed open, but for air, not to bite. I slid around and had her arms from behind. In that position the worst you can get is a kick on a shin. She was gasping. My grip may have been really hurting her right arm because I had the gun in that hand and the butt was pressing into her. When I removed that hand to drop the Marley in my pocket she didn’t move, and I turned loose and backed up a step.

  “I know who you are,” I said. “I caught your show last week and you were wonderful. I’m not a cop, I’m a private detective. I work for Nero Wolfe. When you get your breath you’ll tell me why you’re here.”

  She turned, slowly. It took her five seconds to make the half-turn to face me. “You hurt me,” she said.

  “No apology. A squeeze and a little bruise on an arm are nothing to what you had in mind.”

  She rubbed the arm, her head tilted back to look up at me, still breathing through her mouth. I was being surprised that I had recognized her. On the stage she was extremely easy on the eyes. Now she was just a thirty-year-old female with a good enough face, in a plain gray suit and a plain little hat, but of course she was under strain.

  She spoke. “Are you Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin?”

  “No. I’m my Archie Goodwin. I’m Nero Wolfe’s confidential assistant.”

  “I know about you.” She was getting enough air through her nose. “I know you’re a gentleman.” She extended a hand to touch my sleeve. “I came here to get something that belongs to me. I’ll get it and go. All right?”

  “What is it?”

  “A—a something with my initials on it. A cigarette case.”

  “How did it get here?”

  She tried to smile, as a lady to a gentleman, but it was a feeble effort. A famous actress should have done better, even under strain. “Does that matter, Mr. Goodwin? It’s mine. I can describe it. It’s dull gold, with an emerald in a corner on one side and my initials on the other.”

  I smiled as a gentleman to a lady. “When did you leave it here?”

  “I didn’t say I left it here.”

  “Was it Sunday evening?”

  “No. I wasn’t here Sunday evening.”

  “Did you kill Yeager?”

  She slapped me. That is, she slapped at me. She was certainly impetuous. Also she was quick, but so was I. I caught her wrist and gave it a little twist, not enough to hurt much, and let go. There was a gleam in her eyes, and she looked more like Meg Duncan. “Yo
u’re a man, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I can be. Right now I’m just a working detective. Did you kill Yeager?”

  “No. Of course not.” Her hand came up again, but only to touch my sleeve. “Let me get my cigarette case and go.”

  I shook my head. “You’ll have to manage without it for a while. Do you know who killed Yeager?”

  “Of course not.” Her fingers curved around my arm, not a grip, just a touch. “I know I can’t bribe you, Mr. Goodwin, I know enough about you to know that, but detectives do things for people, don’t they? I can pay you to do something for me, can’t I? If you won’t let me get my cigarette case you can get it for me, and keep it for me. You can give it to me later, you can decide when, I don’t care as long as you keep it.” Her fingers pressed a little. “I would pay whatever you say. A thousand dollars?”

  Things were looking up, but it was getting a little complicated. At 4:30 yesterday afternoon we had had no client and no prospect of any. Then one had come but had turned out to be a phony. Then Mrs. Perez had dangled a hundred bucks and perhaps more. Now this customer was offering a grand. I was digging up clients all right, but too many clients can be worse than too few.

  I regarded her. “It might work,” I said. “It’s like this. Actually I can’t take a job; I’m employed by Nero Wolfe. He takes the jobs. I’m going to look this place over, and if I find your cigarette case, as I will if it’s here, I’ll take it. Give me your keys, to the door down below and the elevator.”

  Her fingers left my arm. “Give them to you?”

  “Right. You won’t need them any more.” I glanced at my wrist. “It’s ten-thirty-five. You have no matinee today. Come to Nero Wolfe’s office at half past two. Six-eighteen West Thirty-fifth Street. Your cigarette case will be there, and you can settle it with Mr. Wolfe.”

  “But why can’t you—”

  “No. That’s how it is, and I have things to do.” I put a hand out. “The keys.”

  “Why can’t I—”